


Sans Sympathy

by cornpony



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Gen, I mean a lot of angst, I'm a horrible person
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-05-01 01:00:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 32,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5186207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cornpony/pseuds/cornpony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The true horrors of the scientific world come to light as Sans and Alphys, alongside veteran scientist W. D. Gaster, begin their experiments on monster patients and golden flowers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fallen Down

Still alive.  
  
Every time he visited these poor creatures, a small part of Sans wished he’d walk in on nothing more than piles of dust.  Keeping them on the brink of death for so long was wrong, and he knew this, but…if they could keep these monsters alive for just a little while longer…  
  
Ah.  He couldn’t think about it anymore.  It was starting to get to him.  Sans wheeled the cart over to his first patient’s bedside, his motions becoming automatic as he tied a line of rubber around the comatose monster’s arm, slid a needle under their skin, drew up some blood, wrote their name on the side of the syringe.  He repeated this process with all twenty-six of them.  
  
With that done, he returned to his first patient.  This was his least favorite part.  He stuck a syringe into the patient’s upper arm, squeezing a dose of cloudy blue liquid into them.  The patient’s face flickered in discomfort.  They all did this.  Sans tried not to think about it too much as he injected the others.  
  
Sans pushed his blood samples and empty syringes into the Blood Lab and let the resident hematologist take it from there.  Every time he slid that cart through the door, he felt as if he’d washed his hands of a tiny evil he’d scooped up in the patient area.  With a sigh, he made his way back to Lab Room 1.  
  
“Hey,” Sans called to the lanky figure bent over a table.  Without looking up from his work, the figure spoke in a strange voice.  
  
“You don’t have to do that, you know,” the figure said.  “We’ve got plenty of people here that would be glad to.”  
  
“I know,” Sans said wearily, collapsing into his chair and rolling up to his desk.  “I just don’t…” he sighed again.  He didn’t what?  Didn’t trust anybody else to do it?  Didn’t want to put anyone through the gnawing guilt he felt every single day?  Well, whatever the case might’ve been, he trusted no one but himself to complete the task.  
  
He stared at his messy desk and sighed.  He’d come into the lab with the intent to sketch up a fresh blueprint for an idea he had, but there was no way he’d be sketching anything on this tornado of trash and trinkets.  It was mostly plastic lidded cups half-full of flat soda, but there were several food wrappers and crumpled sheets of paper as well.  He’d have to clean this off before he could get anything done.  He hefted himself from his chair and started chunking trash into the proper receptacles across the room, going from his desk to the garbage with two handfuls at a time.  
  
The other scientist glanced over his shoulder and grinned at Sans.  “May as well put most of that in the biohazard trash,” he said.  It was hard to tell with him, since his peculiar voice had nearly no inflection, but Sans knew the other skeleton was trying to make a joke.  It wasn’t that funny, but Sans laughed anyway.  Ever since he started working on his current project, his already vast sense of humor had really broadened.  He could find something to laugh at in nearly anything.    
  
It helped.    
  
“Yeah,” Sans said as he crammed several wads of old papers into the correct recycling bin, “I’ve been meaning to do this for awhile now, anyway…what’s Alphys up to today?”  
  
As if on cue, Alphys made her way into the lab, carrying a small rectangular device in her hand.  “Oh, great,” she said, “both of you are here.  I was hoping you would be.  I need to test this out.”  
  
This time, the lanky figure stopped what he was doing and turned completely around.  He had some facial features similar to Sans—the wide mouth and thick cheekbones, mostly—but Alphys had once pointed out that Sans’s brother Papyrus looked more like their Uncle Wingdings than Sans did.  Still, even a stranger could see the faint familial resemblance between the two skeletons.  
  
“Ask her what she’s made,” Wingdings said to Sans.  
  
To someone who hadn’t been around Wingdings their whole life, his voice sounded like nothing but garbled syllables.  Whenever Wingdings needed to speak to someone, Sans had to interpret for him.  
  
“He says you’re looking lovely today,” Sans said.  His uncle gave him a weary look, but said nothing.    
  
“Th-thank you, Dr. Gaster,” Alphys blushed.  “A-anyway, I’ve been tinkering with this thing all night, and I think I may have it in working order now.  I need to test it out.”  
  
“What is it, exactly?” Sans asked her.  
  
“Hopefully, it’s a translator,” Alphys said.  “So I can understand Dr. Gaster without you having to tell me what he says all the time.  Wouldn’t that be nice?”  
  
“That silly girl has wasted her time yet again,” Wingdings said.  
  
“What’d he say?”  
  
“He says he can’t wait to see if it works,” Sans grinned.  
  
Alphys took that as her cue to demonstrate her new invention.  “W-well, all I have to do is place this electrode on my head”—she stuck a white square onto her forehead, connected to her device by a thin wire—“and turn this on…”  
  
When she flicked the switch on her invention, nothing noticeable happened.    
  
“Does it work?” Wingdings asked.  
  
Alphys’s eyes widened, a smile erupting across her face.  “Yes!” she exclaimed.  “I can u-understand you!”  She slid the device into her front pocket.  “Let’s see if it still works when I’m not holding it out in front of me.  As a matter of fact…”  She trotted across the room.  “Say something now.  Let’s see if I can hear you from over here.”  
  
Wingdings opened his mouth to say something, but Sans interrupted him.  “Be nice,” Sans whispered.  
  
“Er…” Wingdings said.  “I don’t know…that is…you know I don’t like being put on the spot like this, Alphys.”  
  
So much for being nice, Sans thought, shaking his head.  
  
But Alphys scarcely noticed the harsh comment.  “Oh my God?  It works!  It really, really works…this’ll make our lives so much simpler, e-especially yours, Dr. Gaster.  Now Sans doesn’t have to stop what he’s doing to translate for us.”  
  
“As if he ever did anything around here to begin with,” Wingdings said, but the cranky scientist was grinning.  “Ah, I kid.  I know it’s hard to tell with this voice of mine.”  
  
“You’ll get used to it,” Sans said to Alphys.  “You’ll start to learn when he’s joking and when he’s pissed off.  You gotta watch his face.”  
  
“Gotcha,” Alphys said with a nod.  Without another word, Wingdings turned his back to the two of them, returning to his work.  
  
“Now that that’s settled,” Alphys said, “I wanted to show you something, Sans.  Care to take a walk with me?”  
  
“Sure,” Sans shrugged.  “Call me if you need me, Unc, I’ve got my phone in my pocket.”  
  
“Fine,” Wingdings mumbled.  “Hurry back.”  
  
****  
  
“So,” Sans said as he walked at Alphys’s side, enjoying his time out of the lab, even though it was sweltering hot outside the building.  “D’you really have somethin to show me, or did you just wanna get out of the lab for awhile?”  
  
“I’ve actually got something to show you,” Alphys said.  “You know how we’re working on a…w-well, how we’re trying to find the perfect vessel for a monster soul?”  
  
“I thought you were working on a robot, or something.”  
  
Alphys blushed.  “I-I’ve decided to set that idea aside for now,” she said.  “I’ve found something a little more…you’ll see.”  
  
Sans could tell by the directions Alphys took that they were most likely headed to King Asgore’s castle for something or other.  His hunch turned out to be correct.  Their footsteps echoed down the long, mostly empty corridor leading to the throne room.  The only other person present was a lone guard leaned against the wall near the throne room entrance.  The guard’s entire body was covered in armor, so Sans couldn’t see their facial expressions, but the guard gave a curt nod as Sans and Alphys passed through the archway.  
  
King Asgore’s throne room was more of a garden than anything.  The air was cool against Sans’s bones and smelled vaguely floral.  Birds twittered.  A cobblestone path wound its way through exotic trees and shrubs, leading up to a clearing of sorts, where the king's throne sat.  Currently, the throne was empty.  
  
Alphys led Sans down the path and into the clearing.  Directly in front of the king's throne, bathed in a ray of sunlight, was a single golden flower.  
  
“I,” Alphys started, clearing her throat.  “I want to use this for our experiments.”  
  
Sans crooked a finger and held it to his chin.  “A flower?” he said.  
  
“Y-yes,” Alphys said.  “When the king…”  She caught herself and lowered her voice.  “When the king returned from…from the surface, he…that flower started growing.  The seedpod must've caught on his fur, or something, and he brought it down here.  It’s not indigenous to the Underground.  It’s a Surface flower.”  
  
“So, I mean, does it…you think it’s got special properties we couldn’t find elsewhere, or…?”  
  
“I’m not sure,” Alphys admitted.  “Part of it’s just sentimental.  You know.  Maybe to…to honor the king and queen’s children.”  
  
Sans nodded sadly.  “And y’know, we could take the seeds from this one and grow some more…”  
  
“…To have more to experiment on,” Alphys finished for him.  “That’s what I was thinking.”  
  
“But if we put a soul into a flower…” Sans trailed off, frowning.  
  
“It doesn’t matter what vessel it’s in,” Alphys replied.  “Just as long as it survives.  At least long enough to…”  
  
There was no need for Alphys to finish that train of thought.  The two of them already knew the end goal of all their collected research and experiments and sacrifices.  
  
Freedom.  
  
“Well, we could give it a shot,” Sans said.  Though, truthfully, he’d liked Alphys’s robot idea a lot better.  At least robots had…appendages.  But he kept his mouth shut about it.  
  
“I’ll ask Asgore if it’s okay,” Alphys said.  “Though I’m sure it will be.  Wait here a sec.”  
  
Alphys trotted off.  Sans watched her go, then stared down at the golden flower as she left his line of sight.  Did he…would he really try and put another monster’s soul into a flower, of all things?  It just seemed so…wrong.  
  
_Not any more wrong than what you’ve already done_ , Sans told himself.  
  
“Whatever,” he whispered to himself, raising a hand to his aching head.  
  
****  
  
The lab was abuzz with the king’s servants, countless monsters dressed in utility suits emblazoned with the royal crest on the front and back.  Some of them were carting wheelbarrows full of dirt and other gardening tools off down the main hallway, but others had their arms full of Wingdings’s personal property;  the skeleton watched in horror as his delicate lab equipment, his glass petri dishes full of samples, his folders full of his paperwork, were being whisked away by these people he didn’t even know, let alone authorize to be in his lab.  
  
He clenched his fists.  “SANS!  GET IN HERE!”  
  
Sans took his sweet time ambling out of the Blood Lab and into the main hallway.  He was really in for it, and he knew that, so he was in no hurry to get an earhole-full from his uncle.  Alphys had apparently heard the hubbub and decided to skirt out into the hallway, too.  
  
“S-something wrong, Dr. Gaster?” she squeaked.  
  
“What in fresh hell is going on in here?” he demanded, directing the question at Sans.  
  
Alphys’s eyes widened in realization.  “Sans,” she said out of the corner of her mouth, “I thought you were g-going to tell him about this.”  
  
Sans grinned sheepishly.  “Yeah,” he said, reaching a hand back to his neck vertebrae.  “Guess I kinda forgot, huh?”  
  
“Oh, Sans,” Alphys sighed, shaking her head.  “I-I’m really sorry, Dr. Gaster, I—“  
  
Just then, two of the king’s servants made their way down the hall, each of them carrying one end of a piece of some kind of metal tubing.  Wingdings gaped at them for a moment, trying to get a grasp on the situation, before he bolted after the two monsters.  
  
“Hey!” he spat, looking very Papyrus-like as he stomped his boots after them.  “I don’t know where you’re going with that, but you’d better be extremely care—“  
  
“Sorry, buddy,” one of the monsters grunted, “can’t understand a word you’re saying.”  
  
“Oh, for—!” Wingdings groaned.  “SANS!  GET OVER HERE AND TRANSLATE!”  
  
_Well, this is turning out to be a mess_ , Alphys thought.  But while Wingdings and Sans were off doing…whatever…she could at least try and make herself useful.  She followed two of the king’s servants down the hall, past the patients’ quarters, past the lab rooms, and off down a smaller hallway.  
  
This part of the lab was scarcely used; the it mainly housed Wingdings’s odds and ends, which had to be moved out to make room for what was to come.  Alphys could smell dust in the air, which was very unusual for the surgical cleanliness everywhere else.  One of the lightbulbs overhead had burnt out and no one had bothered to replace it.    
  
It was pretty gloomy, but it’d have to do.  
  
“Dr. Alphys,” one of the king’s servants said, jogging up to her.  “We were thinking about putting some boards down off that far wall and making plant boxes—“  
  
She listened patiently as the man prattled on about his plans, nodding and agreeing to them once he was finished.  At this point, she didn’t much care about the setup, she just wanted to get on with it.  
  
Boards were nailed together.  Dirt was poured.  Grow lights were strung haphazardly from the ceiling.  Seeds were planted and watered.  And in the very center of the makeshift garden was the golden flower that had started it all.  
  
Something about that flower gave Alphys a sudden feeling of dread in the pit of her gut, but she knew she was just being silly.  She pushed the thought out of her mind.  
  
“So I’m assuming,” came Wingdings’s voice from behind her, “that you and Sans are going to use these for vessel experimentation.”  
  
“In a nutshell,” Alphys nodded without turning around to look at him.  Now that her idea was coming to fruition, she was starting to have second thoughts about it.  Too late for that now, she scolded herself.  
  
Wingdings crossed the room and examined the golden flower.  “What kind of flower is this?” he asked.  
  
“I’m not sure,” Alphys said.  “It’s from the Surface.”  
  
“From the Surface, eh…”  He let a moment of thoughtful silence pass between the two of them.  “This may turn out to be interesting after all.”  
  
“And I’m quite fond of your translation device, by the by,” he said as he walked toward Alphys.  He reached a hand out, and for a split second Alphys thought he was going to strike her, but he merely gave her a pat on the head.  “It certainly does make things easier.”  
  
And with that, Wingdings departed, leaving Alphys alone.  Alone with her troubling thoughts.  Alone with that flower.  
  
She needed some fresh air.  She scurried out of the makeshift garden and made a beeline for the main elevator.


	2. Interesting Reaction

Sans had collected all the data he needed from his monster patients.  Now, he was just waiting around for them to die.  
  
Secured to the ceiling above each patient’s bed was an ominous device that, once the monsters died, would capture their soul and lock it in an airtight container—just as they’d done with the human souls in the past.    
  
That is, if their souls could survive that long.    
  
Most monster souls lacked the strength to survive after death, unlike a human’s.  That was the reason Sans was injecting everyone with that cloudy blue liquid.  Within that liquid was a special solution Alphys derived from a human soul—what she deemed “Determination.”  Hopefully, pumping the monsters’ veins full of Determination would allow their souls to thrive after death.  
  
After all, if the monster souls didn’t survive…that would mean Sans, Alphys, Uncle Wingdings, all the other lab assistants…had been doing these horrific experiments for nothing.  
  
Sans had a clipboard in hand as he went over to the first patient’s bedside.  He wasn’t expecting that he’d have to take any notes on their conditional changes, but he carried it with him just the same.  But when he stared down at his patient, the clipboard tumbled from his hands and clattered to the floor.  
  
The patient’s eyes were open.  
  
Sans struggled to suck in a breath.  “Oh my God,” he whispered.  “Oh my God.”  
  
What should he even do in this situation?  These monsters had been nearly dead when they’d arrived at the lab, and all of Sans’s experiments just seemed to make them worse.  Never, not in a million years, would he ever expect these monsters to open their eyes again.  
  
“Oh my God,” he said again.  He leaned over the patient’s bedside.  “Can…can you hear me?” he choked.  
  
The monster struggled to open her mouth, her lips trembling.  With a great amount of effort, she finally rasped a single word:  
  
“Water.”  
  
For a second, Sans was so stunned that he didn’t comprehend what she’d said.  “Uh—yeah,” he breathed, shaking his head.  “Yeah, yeah, of course.  I’ll get you some water.  I’ll be right back, okay?  I’ll be—I’ll be right back.”  
  
Sans sped out of the patients’ room as fast as his short legs could carry him and rushed down the hallway.  There was a water cooler just outside Lab Room One, about a hundred feet away.  He made a beeline for it.  
  
His hands were shaking so badly that he got the paper cup halfway full and dropped it.  He felt the water seeping through the tops of his shoes and into his socks as he filled another cup, trying harder this time to keep his hands steady.  
  
“Sans?” came Alphys’s voice, accompanied by the telltale shuffling of her feet to his side.  “A-are you…okay?  You look kinda…bad.”  
  
He didn’t even know how to answer that question.  He opened his mouth a couple times to try, but he could think of absolutely nothing to say to her that would do this situation justice.  She’d just have to see it for herself.  “Just follow me,” he finally said, brushing past her and making his way back to the patients’ room.  
  
“What’s the matter?” Alphys said, furrowing her brow in worry.  “Is it…oh, God, they’ve…th-they’ve turned to Dust, haven’t they?”  It was always hard to see a fellow monster’s remains, even if you didn’t know them on a personal level.  They were expecting, no, wanting those monsters to hurry up and pass on, but it still wasn’t an easy thing to look at.   
  
“Just…” Sans said.  But he didn’t even bother to finish that train of thought.  They walked through the doorway to the patients’ rooms, Sans leading her to the bedside.  
  
The bedridden monster’s eyes rolled over to the cup in Sans’s hand.  She attempted to move her arm, to reach up and grab it, but she could scarcely manage a muscle twitch.  
  
“No, no, it’s okay, I got it, I’ll help you,” Sans babbled in a soothing tone.  Snapping out of her silent stupor, Alphys pressed a button on the side of the hospital bed, raising it to a comfortable incline.  
  
“Here,” Sans whispered, bringing the cup to the monster’s lips.  She took a few pulls of the liquid into her mouth, her face contorting in pain as she swallowed.  Then she gave a feeble shake of her head.  Her signal that she couldn't drink any more of it, Sans assumed.  
  
“We n-need to get s-s-somebody in here to examine her,” Alphys said.  “Have any of the others…?”  
  
“I dunno,” Sans said, “I haven’t gotten the chance to check them yet, I just…”  He put a hand to the side of his head.  This was all happening too fast.  “I saw _her_ , and she wanted some water, and I…what does this _mean_ , Alphys?”  
  
Alphys bit her lower lip.  “I-I’m not sure,” she said.  “But we can worry about it later, we need to…”  Abruptly, she shuffled out of the room.  Sans willed his legs to follow her.  “We need to have them all examined, we need to tell Dr. Gaster about this, we need…oh my God, I don’t know what we need.”  
  
****  
  
All of them.  Every single one of the comatose monsters had woken up.  They were extremely weak, the majority of them unable to do much more that utter a few words and twitch a few limbs, but they were alive nonetheless.    
  
Wingdings, Sans, and Alphys had spent the entire afternoon analyzing the patients’ data—blood samples, PET scan results, even hair follicle testing—to the point where, if any of them had to read another lab report, they’d be liable to jump headfirst into the Core and put themselves out of their misery.  Finally, they couldn’t take any more of the lab’s stuffiness, so they dragged themselves out of the lab and into a nearby diner for some food.  
  
Sans was a stress eater.  So was Alphys.  They’d each polished off their meals in record time and, both of them being the type to finish off their dinner with something sweet, had decided to split a heaping bowl of ice cream.  Wingdings eyed them in disgust as they stuck their spoons into the rapidly melting confection over and over again, with complete disregard for contracting each other’s germs.  
  
“So,” Wingdings sighed, “what do you two make of this…occurrence?”  
  
“Well,” Alphys said, licking a glob of chocolate sauce from her claw, “I know this sounds bad, but…I-I kinda hope they pull through.  I-I know they’re not out of the woods yet…they’re all still so weak, but…”  
  
“But if they do make a full recovery,” Wingdings said, “the majority of our research will have been for nothing.”  He sighed into his coffee mug, taking a lengthy drink.  He sat the mug back down and cupped it in his hands, feeling the warmth seep into his bones.  He stared into the blackish liquid.  “And King Asgore certainly won’t be happy about all the time and resources we’ve wasted.”  
  
“He’ll just have to get over it,” Sans said flatly.  “If they pull through, well, we’ll just try somethin else.”  
  
“Surely he wouldn’t be _mad_ if everyone survived,” Alphys said.  
  
“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Wingdings said.  “King Asgore can surprise you, sometimes.”  
  
Sans and Alphys shot each other a confused glance.  They might’ve asked Wingdings about that ominous comment, but the both of them were too tired to care very much.  They finished their ice cream in silence.  
  
****  
  
Wingdings loomed over one of the sleeping patients’ bedsides, staring down at the frail creature below him.  The recent lab reports on these monsters had been very…interesting.  He wasn’t quite sure what to make of it.  He wasn’t a medical doctor—at least, not on paper, he wasn’t—but he had to have a look at the patients himself.  He just had to.  
  
“Hey, Unc,” came the voice of his nephew from seemingly nowhere—well, Sans got the gift of sneaking up on people from him, certainly.  Sans made his way to the patient’s bed and stood at his uncle’s side.  “Whatcha doin?”  
  
“Merely observing,” Wingdings said.  “Have you read through today’s reports yet?”  
  
Sans frowned.  “Yeah.”  
  
“What do you think about this?” Wingdings said.  Gently, he pressed a bony fingertip to the monster’s forearm.  When he pulled his hand back, the monster’s skin came with it, adhered to his finger like some kind of putty.  Sans was sure his uncle would pull the monster’s skin off, but after stretching a few inches, it unstuck from Wingdings’s finger and snapped back into place with a sickening _splorch_.    
  
“I…” Sans muttered, searching for the right words for the situation, but finding none.  _That’s really gross._   “I don’t know what to make of that, to be honest.”  
  
“It’s very strange,” Wingdings mused.  “Very, very strange.  Some of their test results are frighteningly high, some of them are almost impossibly low…”  He shook his head.  “For all intents and purposes, they should…er…”  
  
“I know,” Sans mumbled.  He didn’t want to say it aloud, but they both knew it.    
  
 _They should all be dead._   
  
“The only thing I can think of that might be keeping them alive,” Sans went on, “is the Determination injections, because…I mean, other than that…”  He shrugged, his voice trailing off.  
  
“I think you’re right,” Wingdings agreed.  “But this”—he prodded at the monster’s goopy skin again—“must be an adverse effect of Determination.  Wouldn’t you agree?”  
  
“Maybe monsters just can’t handle it,” Sans said, staring down at the patient.  A pang of guilt ached in his chest cavity.  He had done this.  He had injected them with the Determination.  This was all his fault.  
  
“I suppose there’s nothing to do now but monitor their progress,” Wingdings said after a few beats of silence.  He glanced over at his nephew.  The younger skeleton wore a pained expression as he frowned at the creature in the hospital bed, his hands curled into fists.    
  
Sans was new to all of this, these horrors of the scientific world.  When Wingdings was Sans’s age and had just begun his career, the sleepless nights, the gnawing culpability, the moral dilemmas…it had nearly eaten him alive.  But he’d persevered.  And he was certainly glad he’d stuck with it.  If his nephew could just get through this first hurdle, he was well on his way to becoming a fine young scientist.   
  
Wingdings put a comforting hand on Sans’s shoulder.  “Say.  This would be a great time to show you one of my…other projects.  How about we get out of this room for awhile?”  
  
Sans looked up at his uncle and forced a small smile.  “Yeah, sure.  Lead the way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had some free time, so I was able to get this second chapter done pretty quickly. I'm not sure if I'll be able to upload a chapter every other day, though. I'll try to get them finished in a timely fashion, though, I promise(:


	3. Test Run

“One of the most important rules of being a good scientist, Sans,” Wingdings said, “is getting Plan B ready before Plan A has a chance to disappoint you.”    
  
They had gone down to the end of the main hallway and into what Sans had always assumed to be a broom closet.  The tiny room had a slop sink in the corner and some stray cleaning supplies here and there, so it probably _had_ been a broom closet at some point.  The naked bulb hanging from the ceiling buzzed indifferently, coating the room with a grimy yellow light.  Wingdings’s work desk barely fit in there, taking up nearly half the room.  He had a tarp thrown over it.  Something large and lumpy was underneath.  
  
The older skeleton pulled the tarp away from his desk with a flourish.  An elongated hunk of metal fashioned in the shape of a skull lay underneath, gleaming in the sickly light.  Its jagged maw was open wide, and Sans noticed a piece of tubing secured inside.  
  
Sans didn’t have a clue what this skull-thing could be, but it certainly looked impressive.  “Whoa,” he said.  “Well, it definitely looks cool.  What’s it do?”  
  
“I’m glad that you asked,” Wingdings said, a hint of pride in his voice.  “You’ll be so proud of the name I chose for it.  I call it…”  Wingdings’s face erupted in a smile.  “…The Gaster Blaster.”  
  
Sans laughed.  “Nice.  So I guess it’s a weapon, or…?”  
  
“Of sorts,” Wingdings nodded.  With quite a bit of effort, he turned the Gaster Blaster around, to better see into its mouth.  He ran a bony finger alongside the edge of one of its metal teeth, almost lovingly.    
  
“In my downtime, I’ve been studying the Determination that Alphys harvested from the human souls.  She was able to replicate it, as you know, but only in a liquid form.  Well…”  Wingdings grinned, and at that point, Sans had pretty much gathered where his uncle was going with this story.  “I’ve found a way to convert liquid Determination into thermal energy.”  
  
Sans rapped a knuckle bone on the contraption’s snout.  _Bap, bap._   There was no question that, if it actually worked, it would be a fantastic piece of machinery…but what did Uncle Wingdings want to do with it?  What was the significance of using Determination as the primary energy source?  
  
Unless…  
  
“I can sense those gears turning in your skull, dear nephew,” Wingdings said.  “Have you figured out what I’m aimed to do with it yet?”  
  
“You’re gonna try to blow up the barrier, aren’t you?”  
  
“Precisely,” Wingdings nodded.  “This is just a prototype, of course.  I haven’t tested it yet.  I was thinking you and I would try it out tomorrow, on Alphys’s day off.”  
  
That sounded awfully suspicious.  “Why on Alphys’s day off?  You don’t want her to see it, or somethin?”  
  
“Because I, er…”  Wingdings fidgeted with the cuff of his lab coat.  “I didn’t actually ask her permission to use the Determination.  I’m certain she wouldn’t have minded, but…”  He sighed.  “That girl gives me a headache more often than not, but if something goes wrong with this thing, I don’t…”  
  
_See, Unc, you_ do _still have a conscience._   “You don’t want her to feel like she’s responsible somehow.  I get it.”  Sans smiled.  “I mean, it’s kinda bad that you stole from her and all, but I get it.”  
  
“I don’t know how those monsters in the hospital are still clinging to life,” Wingdings said with a shake of his head, “but by the looks of things, we’ll be hitting a dead end with that portion of our research.  We’ll just have to wait and see, I suppose.  But in the meantime…”  He threw the tarp back over the Gaster Blaster and ushered Sans back out into the hallway.  “Let’s explore some other options.”  
  
Sans stuck his hands in his lab coat pockets as he followed his uncle down the hallway.  “That’s what scientists do, right?  Try something, screw it up, then try something a little different?”  
  
“You are painfully correct,” Wingdings grinned.  “Now, back to our office we go.  We’ve got more reports to pick through.”  
  
****  
  
Sans’s idea was to shoot the Gaster Blaster directly at the barrier (“It couldn’t _hurt_ anything, right?”), but that would involve asking King Asgore for permission to fire an untested weapon inside the castle, and Wingdings was certain they would not be allowed to do that.  Instead, the two skeletons strapped the cannon down to a wheeled cart and pushed it to a secluded area on the outskirts of Hotland.  
  
“You’re sure nobody lives here?” Sans said as he scanned the horizon, eye sockets squinting as he searched for any signs of movement.  As far as he could see, it was nothing but craggy rocks and red sand, but you could never tell what kind of critter might be lurking around.  
  
“This place has been deserted for years,” Wingdings said.  “There’s nothing out here but rocks.  Perfect for target practice, wouldn’t you agree?”  
  
“Definitely,” Sans said.  He knew that this was somewhat of a serious matter, since something may go horribly wrong, but he was still pretty pumped to get to blow some shit up.  It’d be some great stress relief.  Hopefully, his uncle’s invention would actually work on the first try.  
  
Wingdings unbuckled the straps from his invention.  “The Gaster Blaster has a bit of a failsafe design,” he said.  “Not just anyone can use it.  It takes a strong bit of magical energy to operate it.”    
  
The older skeleton held out his hand.  He took a slow, steady breath, and as he did so, his left eye socket glowed with a lavender-colored aura.  He channeled his magic into the palm of his hand, coating his hand bones in purple mist.  Slowly, carefully, he directed his energy into the device.  Like wafting smoke, his magical essence trailed from his hand and engulfed the blaster.  A low, threatening hum emitted from the bowels of the device.  
  
“This is the part I’m not so certain about,” Wingdings said.  “In theory, it should work, but you know how that usually goes.”    
  
He took aim at a faraway rock and clenched his fist.  The Gaster Blaster birthed a wide beam, screaming and crackling as it travelled through the air.  It missed the rock Wingdings was aiming for, but hit another one about fifty feet beyond it.  With a satisfying _bwoomp_ , the rock exploded into a fine spray of pebbles.  
  
“Incredible,” Wingdings said, grinning broadly.  “That went…much better than expected.”  His magical essence ebbed away from the device, seeping back into his bones.    
  
“Whoa,” Sans said in awe.  He smiled up at his uncle.  “Lemme try.”  
  
“Be careful,” Wingdings warned, stepping away from the machine.  “It seemed to accept my magic just fine, but we may run into some hiccups with yours.”  
  
That stung a little bit, but Sans didn’t dwell on it.  Ever since Sans was little, his magical energy had been erratic and hard to control, and had proved to be destructive on more than one occasion.  He could manage it a lot better now, but sometimes things tended to…slip.    
  
Well, whatever.  He’d give it a try.  
  
His left eye socket burst into electric blue flame.  He willed that power into the palm of his hand, feeling the magic jump and jitter across his bones as it attempted to do as its master directed.  He then channeled that wild energy into the Gaster Blaster, intrigued and slightly fearful at the feel of his essence flowing out of him and into something else, something dangerous.  The blaster growled in response, ready to fire.  Just as his uncle had, Sans clenched his fist.  
  
The beam Sans’s magic produced looked noticeably different from his uncle’s.  Whereas Wingdings’s magic conjured a clean, straight shot of energy, the power Sans produced looked like a toddler scribbling on the walls with a crayon.  Like a map of branching blood veins.  Like crisscrossing bolts of lightning.  
  
It didn’t hit a rock, like Sans had been aiming for.  Instead it curved downward and plunged straight into the ground.  
  
The sound it made was so loud, Sans could feel it in his teeth.  The ground shook at their feet.  In the distance, the spot where the beam had landed became engulfed in dirty smoke.    
  
_Oh, shit._  
  
Carefully, Sans cast his eyes over at his uncle.  He figured Wingdings would be livid with him.  He had not heeded Wingdings’s warning, but instead channeled all the magical energy he could into the Gaster Blaster.  Had they been anywhere near civilized society, there’d be no telling _what_ could’ve happened.  
  
“Your magic gets stronger every day,” Wingdings said, shaking his head in disbelief.  He gave his nephew a knowing smile.  “See now why we didn’t take this directly into King Asgore’s castle?”  
  
Sans nodded.  He could’ve torn the whole building apart.  Worse, he could’ve killed someone.  Good thing they were out in the middle of nowhere.  
  
When the dust settled, the two of them walked over to the smoldering hole caused by Sans’s Gaster Blaster beam.  It was easily a hundred feet deep.    
  
“Impressive, nephew,” Wingdings said, a crooking a finger and resting it on his chin.  “Now you simply need to learn to control it.”  
  
Despite the carnage he’d made, no harm had actually been done to anything except the ground.  Sans found himself eager to try again, to manage more self-control.  “Want me to give it another shot, Unc?”  
  
“Yes, absolutely,” Wingdings nodded.  “Practice makes perfect, as they say.”  
  
Sans cracked his knuckle bones, his eye lighting up with blue power.  Time to give the Gaster Blaster another whirl.  
  
****  
  
A loud rapping sounded at Alphys’s front door.  Panic shot through her.  It was the middle of the afternoon, but she was still in her pajamas.  Should she pretend she wasn’t home?  She should pretend she wasn’t home.  She held her breath, being as quiet as she could.  
  
“Alphys, darling, I know you're in there,” came a muffled voice behind the door.  “Come on, open up.  I won’t be long.”  
  
Alphys stifled a groan.  Well, if she didn’t get up and let him in, he’d just phase right through the door, anyway.  She heaved herself off the couch and opened the door.  
  
“Hello,” the figure in the doorway said pleasantly.  Even though he was a ghost, devoid of any physical composition save for a basic cylindrical shape, he still managed to have style.  A white tuft of ghost-hair covered his right eye flirtatiously.  His smile was broad and, dare Alphys say, sexy.  Whereas most of the other ghosts in the Underground were your basic white, he had a slight pinkish tint to him.  
  
“H-hey, Mettaton,” Alphys said, ushering him inside.  “Sorry, I’m, uh…still in my pajamas, and all.”  
  
“Oh, you know I don’t mind,” Mettaton said.  Which was probably true—he’d seen her look worse than this.  “I just came to see how things were going.”  
  
He started floating toward the workshop without her.  Alphys trotted along behind him.    
  
“I-I haven’t worked on it much today,” she admitted.  “I adjusted a few…well, I’ll just show you.”  
  
She turned the light on in the workshop.  A rectangle of steel was in the center of her work table.  Across the front of the metal box was a series of tiny LCD panels arranged in a square, four large buttons, and four chrome-plated knobs.  Most noticeable, however, were the two cylindrical tubes attached to either side of the structure.  
  
Mettaton gasped.  “I have arms now!”  He extended a ghostly hand and stroked the metal tubing, giggling softly.  Alphys had to avert her eyes.  
  
“Yes,” she blushed.  “A-and you’ll have hands, too, don’t worry.  I just haven’t gotten that far, yet.”  
  
“Oh, darling,” Mettaton crooned, his eyes brimming with tears.  “It’s lovely.  I have so many plans for my new body, my head’s just _full_ of them.  I’ll be the Underground’s newest TV idol, Alphys, just you wait.  And it’ll all be thanks to you.”  He floated over to Alphys and graced her with a feathery kiss on the cheek.  Her face grew even redder.  
  
“Well,” she said, clearing her throat.  “If—i-if you like that, then wait till you see this.”  She led him over to another work table against the wall.  “I’ve been working a tiny bit on your alternate body, as well—your ‘EX’ body, is what I call it.  I’ve got al-almost all of your face done—“  
  
Mettaton breezed past her.  “Oh, let me see it, let me—oh, my.”    
  
Even though it was nothing more than a sculpted piece of metal with a few wires and such hanging from the back, anyone could tell that the finished product would be a gorgeous sight to behold.  Heavy-lidded, sultry eyes with thick lashes.  A proud, pointed nose.  Full, kissable lips.  And a jawbone for days.  
  
“Oh, yes,” Mettaton whispered.  “Yes, darling, this is exactly what I was imagining.  Better, actually.”  
  
It meant so much to hear him say that, but Alphys tried to to show it.  “I’m glad you like it, but don’t, uh, don’t get too excited about it,” she said gently.  “I’ve still got a long way to go on your box form.  It’ll be a long time before I’m ready to really start on your…newer body.”  
  
“I know,” he said.  “I’ll win my audience over with my wit and my charm, first.  And when I finally debut my new body, they’ll be _floored_.”  He floated back over to the metal box and admired it some more.  “I think it’s good that we’re starting simple.  They’ll fall in love with my personality first, and then they’ll get to see my sexy new bod.”  He laughed, a wonderful and genuine sound.    
  
“S-so I’m on the right track, huh,” Alphys said.  
  
“Oh, absolutely,” he crooned.  
  
“Good,” she nodded.  At least one of her projects were going as planned.  Honestly, she was enjoying working on Mettaton’s body more than she did her real job, and that was a little worrisome.  Oh, well.    
  
Mettaton cocked his head at her.  “Is something bothering you, darling?”  
  
“It’s, uh…”  She scratched absently at her arm, searching for some kind of lie she could tell him.  She couldn’t think of anything.  “I-it’s just been…kinda rough at work, here lately…y’know?”  
  
Mettaton gave her a wan smile.  “Why don’t you tell me all about it over a cup of coffee.  My treat.  As long as you put on actual clothes, that is.”  
  
She couldn’t help but laugh.  “Okay,” she said, shuffling out of the workshop.  “I-it’s a deal.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took me a few days, but chapter 3 is finally up. It reads almost like a filler chapter, but I felt like everything I wrote was necessary to move the plot along. (Well, maybe not the part with Alphys and Mettaton, I probably could've cut that part out, but I wanted to keep it in there.) Anyway, I hope it wasn't too tedious to read.


	4. The Door

Sans let out a loud yawn and rubbed at his eye sockets.  He’d practiced firing the Gaster Blaster all afternoon yesterday, to the point where he barely had enough energy left to keep himself standing.  Wingdings had urged him to stop long before he exhausted himself to that extent, but Sans hadn’t listened.  He was too pissed off to quit.  
  
It really irked him that he still didn’t have enough control of his magic to do something so simple.  When his uncle commanded the Blaster, the beam had been a straight, clean line, and had landed more or less where Wingdings had aimed for.  But every time Sans tried it, the magical current landed all over the place.  Not once did the beam go where he wanted it to.  And he couldn’t understand _why_.  It was so…frustrating.  
  
As soon as he regained some of his strength, he told himself, he’d give it another shot.  Sans liked to be prepared for the worst, and who knew—there may come a day when he’d need to use the Gaster Blaster.  Whenever he got some free time, he’d…  
  
Free time.  That was a laugh.  He couldn't even remember the last time he’d had free time.  
  
“Did you not sleep well?” Alphys asked.  She was seated at her desk, marking up a stack of lab reports with a purple gel pen.  Her pen hovered above the page as she gave a sympathetic look to her colleague.  
  
Sans decided he better not tell her about the Gaster Blaster shenanigans the day before, especially since the weapon was supposed to be kept hush-hush for the time being.  “I woke up exhausted,” he said.  “Feels like somebody beat me with a hammer.”   With a groan, he slumped onto his desk, burying his head in his arms.  
  
“Maybe it’s your mattress,” Alphys mused.  She put the cap back on her pen and tossed it atop her paperwork.  “Hey,” she said, “m-maybe it’d make you feel better to…take a walk?”  
  
Sans lifted his head up.  He forced himself to smile at her.  No sense in being a sourpuss, right?  There was enough of that around the lab as it was.  “Where you headed?” he asked, but it didn’t really matter.  He was already standing up.  
  
“Just to—to check on the flowers,” Alphys said.  “I know that part of our research is pretty much coming to a close, but I’d still…s-still like to run a few more tests.  Y’know, before…before we send everyone home.”  
  
Sans was of the mind that all of their patients should stay under intensive care for at least another couple weeks, but King Asgore was pressuring them to hurry up and discharge everyone back to their families.  Now that Alphys had informed everyone’s next-of-kin that their sick family members had made a miraculous recovery, everybody was clamoring to see their loved ones.  
  
Which, Sans wasn’t blaming them at all for wanting to be reunited with their family, nor for their impatience.  He could easily put himself in their situation.  If something like that had happened to his brother, Papyrus…nothing could hold him back from seeing him again.    
  
On that same token, though, the monsters still needed a lot of care—care that a normal hospital could not provide.  And civilians weren’t allowed into the laboratory by royal decree, so opening the place up to visitors and well-wishers was off the table.  Though the sick monsters would probably benefit from a lengthy hospital stay, Sans supposed he could see the need to release them back to their families as soon as possible.  
  
“Yeah,” Sans said, jamming his hands into his lab coat pockets.  “I’ll head down there with ya—I’d kinda like to stretch my legs for a minute, anyway.”  
  
“Does it really take two people to water flowers?” Wingdings said, but he was grinning.  Giving them a hard time, as usual.    
  
“We’ll hurry back,” Alphys assured him, but Sans shook his head at his uncle, mouthing _no we won’t_ at him.  Wingdings shooed them away with a flap of his hand, giving a little chuckle as he went back to his work.  
  
Alphys led the way down the main hallway, then down a smaller hallway, to the room where the golden flowers were kept.  She opened the door and flipped the light on.  
  
And gasped.  
  
The strong scent of upturned earth filled Sans’s nose holes.  Potting soil was strewn all over the floor.  In the middle flower box, there was a large, gaping hole.  
  
The big flower was gone.  
  
They’d taken seeds from the original golden flower and planted them alongside it, but none of them had gotten as large as the first one had—not even half as much.  But Sans and Alphys didn’t really question it.  They figured it must have had something to do with the difference in soil composition from where the flower had first germinated, or something.    
  
But now the flower was gone, and by the state of the room, it looked like the flower had dug itself out of the flower box and dragged itself away.  
  
But that, of course, was impossible.  
  
“Somebody…s-somebody stole the flower,” Alphys murmured, going to the center flower box and peering down at the hole.  Sans followed her.    
  
Sans hummed in thought.  “Who’d want it, though?  Why would somebody go through the trouble of stealing it, like…what would you do with it?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Alphys said.  “You don’t think Dr. Gaster took it for anything, do you?”  
  
Sans’s cheekbones burned, taking on a blueish tinge.  “He might have,” he replied honestly.  “But to tell ya the truth, I think he would’ve done a better job at covering his tracks”—he made a wide gesture at the dirt-smeared room—“than this.”  
  
“True,” Alphys agreed.  “This is just so—“  
  
But the rest of Alphys’s sentence was cut off by an earsplitting beep coming through the loudspeaker mounted in the corner of the room.  
  
 _Beep, beep, beep—_  
  
“What is that?!” Sans yelled over the noise.  
  
Alphys opened her mouth to reply, but was again cut off by a robotic female voice emitting from the loudspeaker.  “Emergency alarm activated on Floor A, Room Three.  Engaging facility lockdown.  All personnel are to report to their supervisor for further instruction.  Proceed with caution.  _Beep, beep, beep._   Emergency alarm activated on  Floor A, Room Three—“  
  
“That’s the patients’ room!” Alphys yelled.  
  
“Oh, God, it is,” he muttered.  Whatever was happening, it definitely wasn’t good.  He wasn’t much of a runner, but he took off as fast as his short legs would allow him to go, Alphys right behind him.   
  
The main hallway was pure chaos, a flurry of crisp white lab coats and nurse’s scrubs.  Amid the cacophony, Sans caught a few snippets of hurried speech:  
  
“—the panic room?  Should we head down there, or do we—“  
  
“—can’t find him, I can’t find anybody in this—“  
  
“—dangerous—“  
  
“—going on?  Is there something going on in the patients’ room, or—“  
  
“—stay away from there—“  
  
It was a sea of bodies moving in one general direction, trying to get away from whatever the threat was.  Sans and Alphys shoved and shouldered their way through the crowd, trying to fight their way toward the patients’ room.  All the while, Sans kept an eye socket out for Wingdings, but he didn’t see him anywhere.    
  
As they got closer to their destination, the crowd began to thin.  When they finally made it to the patients’ room door, it was coated in a purple aura—a sure sign of Wingdings’s magic.  Sans tried the handle.  It wouldn’t budge.  
  
“He locked the door,” Sans said.  
  
“You think he’s in there?” Alphys asked.  
  
 _Probably_ , Sans thought.  He balled both his hands into fists and rapped at the door.  “Hey, Unc, you in there?” he yelled.  He didn’t wait for a response before he banged again.  “Can you hear me?”  
  
From behind the door, Sans heard his uncle’s muffled voice, but he couldn’t make out what he said; the hubbub in the hall was too loud.  “I hear him,” Sans told Alphys.  “Something’s wrong, or he wouldn’t have locked himself in there.”  
  
What should he do?  There was nothing he _could_ do, not from the outside, anyway.  And Wingdings had sealed the door shut, so there was no getting in.    
  
“Doctor Alphys!  Doctor Sans!” called Sable, one of the lab supervisors, struggling her way through the crowd to reach the two of them.  “I’m so glad I found you.”  Her scrubs had a crumpled look to them.  
  
“Have you got any idea w-what’s—what’s going on?” Alphys asked her.  “Doctor Gaster’s locked himself in there.”  She gestured toward the door to the patients’ room.  
  
“Honestly, I don’t know much,” Sable said.  “I just…I heard these crazy noises all the way from my office, and I stepped out in the hall to see what it was.  I saw Doctor Gaster go running in there”—she nodded at the door—“and by the time I made it down the hall to see what was going on, he’d put a hold on the door with his magic.  Then the alarm went off, and I’ve been trying to herd everybody downstairs, but—“ She threw her hands in the air.  “Nobody’s listening.  I don’t know what to do.”  
  
Alphys bit her lower lip and looked at Sans.  “H-how about I help Sable get everybody to the panic room, and you stay here and watch the door?  I hate to leave you, but…”  She looked around.  The maelstrom in the hallway had gotten worse.  By the looks of things, no one was listening to their lab supervisor (that, or the lab supervisors were just as confused as they were), so everyone was more-or-less running around aimlessly.  “Someone needs to get this situation under control.”  
  
She was right.  Sans nodded at her.  “Yeah.  Okay.  Got your phone on you?”  
  
Alphys patted her pocket.  “Yep.”  
  
“I’ll call you if, uh…”  Sans cast a nervous glance at the door.  “If anything happens.  And you call me if you need anything, alright?”  
  
“Sure,” Alphys said.  “Okay.  Uh…”  She cleared her throat.  “H-hey!” she yelled, but the word was lost on the air, trampled under the clamor all around her.  She called even louder.  “Everybody listen up!”  
  
Some of the monsters stopped their yammering long enough to hear her out.  “The lab is under a lockdown!  I need you to head downstairs to the panic room!”  
  
Immediately, they started firing questions at her, trying to yell over the top of one another to get theirs answered first.  Even if Alphys wanted to, there was no way she could provide answers for them—she barely knew anything herself.  She held her hands up in front of her, as if that might stop the verbal barrage from reaching her ears.  She cringed; all of this yelling was really—  
  
Sable put her thumb and forefinger to her lips and blew out a piercing whistle.  A sizable portion of the monsters quieted down.  Sable gave Alphys a nudge on the shoulder, a sign of encouragement for her to continue.  
  
“I’ll explain everything once we’re all secured in the panic room,” she lied.  “I need you all to…to f-follow me.”  
  
She began walking toward the stairwell and, surprisingly, the crowd of people edged its way forward, following her instructions.  Sable fought her way to the back of the crowd, bringing up the rear.  Slowly but surely, everyone began to trickle down to the panic room.  Once everyone was cleared out of the hall, Sable shut the door behind them, and Sans could hear the sound of multiple locks being engaged.    
  
It made Sans feel a little better that the majority of the people in the lab were out of harm’s way—at least there was that—but his uncle and the hospital patients were still locked inside that room.  He tried to listen at the door for any kind of sound.  He could hear something…a hard to describe sound, like something gritty and slimy dragging itself across the tile floor.  A few ominous thumping sounds, too.  
  
Sans pounded on the door again.  “Unc—Uncle Wingdings?”  
  
No response.  
  
“Oh, God,” Sans muttered.  There was nothing he could do.  He felt so helpless.  He honestly considered breaking the door down, but he knew that was a bad idea.  It was morbid to think about, but if Wingdings was still holding the door shut with his magic, that meant he was still alive to do it.  At least Sans knew his uncle was holding his own…whatever might be going on in there…  
  
His mind went to the worst possible scenario.  Since the threat had broken out in the patients’ room, there could be an intruder in there.  A disgruntled family member, maybe, somebody fed up with the laboratory keeping their loved one under lock and key.  That would also explain the lockdown; they may be trying to keep the intruder as contained as possible.  Wingdings might’ve taken it upon himself to lock himself in there, so that he could attempt to subdue the person himself.  Who knew?  The possibilities were endless.  The worry, the guilt, the feeling of helplessness, the gnawing sensation of not knowing was starting to eat away at Sans.  
  
It felt like hours, but it was probably only a few minutes—the magic ebbed away from the door and Wingdings staggered out, slamming it shut behind him.  As soon as he was out, he put the magic seal back on the door again.    
  
Sans saw his uncle’s knees give out.  As he started to tumble down, Sans shot a hand out and steadied him with a magical current, a jet of blue darting from his palm and lassoing around both of Wingdings’s arms.    
  
“Are you okay?” Sans said, easing his wild magic away from Wingdings, not wanting to risk exposing him to it any more than was necessary.  Wingdings put his back to the wall to keep himself righted.  His chest cavity heaved.  
  
“Fine,” Wingdings said, but he was clearly not fine.  “I just need to…is everyone in the panic room?”  
  
“Yeah,” Sans nodded, “yeah, yeah, they’re fine.  Alphys and Sable got ‘em down there.”  
  
“Good,” Wingdings said breathily.  “I…I have the room secured for now…but…”  He took in a haggard breath.  “Sans…I’ll be frank, I’m about to…lose consciousness, so before I do that, I need you to…listen to me very carefully.”  
  
“I’m listening,” Sans assured him.  
  
“The patients, they’ve…mutated,” Wingdings half-whispered.  At the word mutated, a pang of fear shot through Sans’s bones.  “I don’t…I don’t understand it yet, but they’re danger…ous.  Dangerous.  Just…make sure…make sure they don’t…”  
  
“Make sure they don’t leave that room?” Sans offered.  
  
“Yes,” Wingdings breathed.  “You…Alphys…we need to…”  
  
But his eye sockets drooped closed.  His breathing slowed and became more regular.  His shoulders slumped.  As his consciousness slipped, so did his magical hold on the door.  It ebbed away to almost nothing.  As if in response, something banged against the door, something heavy and wet-sounding.  _Thump th-thump_.  A low, guttural cry could be heard from beyond the door:  
  
“Awuuunggh…”  
  
Shit.  Sans didn’t know a whole lot about keeping doors shut with magic—actually, he didn’t know anything about keeping doors shut with magic—but he didn’t have a choice.  He’d have to try.  He held his palm out and concentrated, envisioning the door coated in his blue aura.  Magic buzzed from his hand and adhered to the door.  He didn’t know how effective it would be, but by the sound of things, the thing banging on the door had stopped.  
  
With his free hand, he fished his phone out of his pocket.  He called Alphys.  “Hey,” he said as he looked worriedly at Wingdings.  He tried to keep his voice calm and level as he spoke to her.  “Not sure, exactly, how to go about this, but Unc’s passed out, and he—yeah, he’s still breathing—I didn’t know if it’d be better to leave him up here, or move him down there—no, I can’t, I’ve got my magic on this door and I can’t move—I don’t think so, but I can’t tell.  We need a nurse to look him over, if that’s possible at all right now—I know.  I know.  Let’s just do the best we can.  Okay—yeah—coming up?  Okay, I’ll keep a watch for ‘em—no, you can just stay down there if you—that’s fine.  Okay.  Bye.”  
  
He ended the call and stuffed the phone back in his lab coat pocket.  His magical barrier on the door flickered for a moment, but blinked back to life as he regained his focus.  As he waited for whatever reinforcements Alphys decided to send up, he looked at his uncle, worry churning all through his body.    
  
 _What happened in there…?_  
  
But every time his thoughts wavered, he noticed that his hold on the door weakened.  For now, he just needed to focus.  There were plenty of capable nurses here, Sans told himself.  His uncle would be fine.  He was breathing.  He was still alive.  He would definitely pull through.  This was just another crazy day in the lab, right?  
  
Right?  
  
He couldn’t hold this door shut forever, though.  He needed to think of some other way to keep it secured, and fast.  Maybe he could—  
  
The stairwell opened, and two burly nurses carrying a stretcher between them made their way over to Wingdings.  Alphys followed not far behind them.  
  
“We’re gonna take him downstairs,” one of the nurses explained.  They eased Wingdings’s unconscious frame onto the stretcher.  “We’ve got enough equipment down there to evaluate him.”  
  
“I told them to call me as soon as he comes to, or as soon as they know anything,” Alphys assured Sans.  “I’m just glad he’s…just glad he’s still with us,” she said.  Carefully, the nurses guided the stretcher down the stairwell.  Alphys shut the door behind them.  
  
“Now that we’re getting Unc taken care of,” Sans said, “we need to think of a way to keep this door shut, and shut tight.  I can’t keep this up much longer.”  
  
Alphys nodded.  She thought for a moment.  Suddenly, her eyes widened.  “I have an idea.  Think you can k-keep that door closed for ten or fifteen more minutes?”  
  
“I think I can manage that,” Sans said.  
  
“I know it sounds crazy, but…I-I have to run to my house,” she said.  “But I’ll get that door secure, I promise.”  
  
“Can you get through the lockdown, though?” Sans said doubtfully.  
  
“I’ll just put the key code into the emergency exit,” she said.  Sans didn’t know what she was talking about—shows just how much attention he paid to their safety training—but he trusted her all the same.  “Okay,” he said with a nod.  “Hurry back, though, cause this”—he inclined his head at the patients’ room door—“is pretty exhausting.”  
  
As soon as he said that, Alphys turned on her heel and headed down the hall.  “Okay!” she called over her shoulder.  “I’ll be back!  A-as soon as I can!  I’ll hurry, I promise!”  
  
Sans heard some beeps and a door opening and closing.  He eased himself to the floor, feeling tired already from keeping the door closed.  Using so much of his energy was taking it out of him.  Again.  He shouldn’t have overdone it yesterday.  He was really feeling it now.  
  
“Hoo boy,” he said, chuckling, despite the grim situation.  “Ain’t this a mess.  Papyrus is gonna blow a gasket when I tell him about today…geez, Louise…”  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a little hold-up while I was writing this chapter. I had most of the chapter written, but decided it was out-of-character, so I scrapped it and started over. I'm much more pleased with what I have now than what I erased. That's why it took longer than usual to write this chapter, though.


	5. Holding

  
Maybe this was a bad idea, Alphys thought as she hurried home, her lungs burning and her leg muscles aching from the little half-jog she was doing.  It didn’t help matters that it was about a billion degrees outside, either.  Sweat trickled from her scaly forehead.  
  
Her idea to keep the patients’ room door sealed was a really…ambitious one, to put it kindly.  It would only be a temporary solution, but Sans couldn’t keep the door barred forever.  She’d have to think of a more permanent solution later on.  
  
With clumsy fingers, she retrieved her cell phone from her lab coat pocket and dialed a number.  She tried to even out her hitching breaths as she spoke.  “H-hey, it’s Alphys, can you—can you meet me at—at my house?  It’s an emergency—yes, a _real_ emergency.  Can you get there within—five minutes?  Oh, thank God.  I’ll see you there.”  
  
When she reached her house, she unlocked the door with sweaty, fumbling hands.  “Gotta hurry, gotta hurry, gotta hurry…”  
  
She rushed to the back of the house and into her workshop, pawing the wall wildly until she found the light switch.  She clicked it on.  The square metal form of her current project seemed to glare at her in disapproval.  
  
“Oh, God, why did I think I could do this in five minutes?” she groaned, grabbing two toolboxes from the floor and hauling them up to her work table.    
  
By some stroke of dumb luck, she’d attached hands to the robot the night before, so that was actually done.  Now all it needed to be functional was a pair of legs.  
  
She’d drawn up blueprints for the robot’s legs some time ago, but there was absolutely no time for something so intricate.  She’d just have to jury rig something together, here.  The main point of the thing was for it to support its own weight and for it to be independently mobile.  And the quickest way to accomplish that would be to run a support beam there…attach a wheel here…  
  
She had an idea.  She slapped a protective mask over her face and fired up the blowtorch.  
  
****  
  
Mettaton didn’t even bother knocking; he phased right through the door.  “Alphys?” he called worriedly.  He turned his translucent body this way and that, searching.  “Alphys, are you—?”  
  
“In here,” she yelled from her workshop.  He floated to her as fast as he could.  
  
“Is everything alright?” he said.  His eyes glanced at his robot body, fitted with hands and some sort of strange wheel-thing since he’d last seen it, but he made a point not to linger on it for too long.  “You sounded so worried over the phone.”  
  
“Uh,” Alphys said.  She didn’t really know how to answer that question.  It would take some time to explain it, and that was time she didn’t have.  She’d have to give him the short version.    
  
“Something went wrong at the lab,” she said, shooting the last few rivets into place with a rivet gun as she spoke.  “I’m not exactly sure what, or even why.  But there’s a door we need to keep closed, and something…s-something apparently very strong is on the other side.  Sans is keeping it closed with magic for now, but he’s not gonna make it much longer.”  
  
Understanding lit up Mettaton’s ghostly eyes.  “And you need my big, strong robot bod to help you out.”  
  
“Yes,” Alphys said, glad he’d picked up on that so quickly.  It’d save her time if she didn’t have to go into much detail about her convoluted plan.  
  
Well, it was as done as she had time for.  She brushed a few metal flakes away from the bar-and-wheel mechanism she’d slapped together to serve as Mettaton’s legs…well, leg.  “I know it’s not what you wanted,” she said, not bothering to conceal the self-disappointment in her voice.  “But it’s just for the time being, okay?  I-I’ll make it pretty later.”  
  
She opened a panel on the side of the robot and flipped a switch.  The twenty small LED screens on the front began to glow a calming white.  
  
“I’m aware that this situation’s fairly dire,” Mettaton said, grinning widely, “but I’ve wanted a physical body for so long, I don’t much care what it looks like, darling.”  He let a beat of silence pass.  “Well, that’s a lie, actually, but I truly think it looks fine.  We’ll discuss the whole leg situation later.”  
  
That was a relief.  She let out a thankful sigh.  Mettaton could be a little bit of a drama queen sometimes, and since time was really of the essence, she was hoping he’d let it pass for now.  “It’s all ready to go.  Um…hop on in?”  
  
Mettaton smirked.  “With pleasure.”  
  
Ever the entertainer, he did a little loop-de-loop in the air before phasing himself into the robot.  The LED screens flickered, then turned a hot pink color.  The robot’s left hand flexed experimentally, then the right.  
  
“I’ve never had hands before,” the robot—Mettaton—said, holding them up to his LED screens for examination.  He gasped.  The sound was pleasantly tinny.  “Is that _my_ voice?  It’s never been so _loud_ before!”  
  
Alphys’s insides squirmed with anxiety, like earthworms wriggling through dirt.  “I know this is…oh, how to say this without being insensitive, u-uh…”  
  
“I know, I know,” Mettaton said, flapping a hand at her.  The act was very prolonged and dramatic.  He’d probably been wanting to do something like that for a long time, Alphys thought briefly.  “We need to get this show on the road.  Be a dear and help me off this table.”  
  
Working together, the two of them lowered Mettaton’s new robot body to the floor.  He wobbled on his wheel appendage, throwing his arms around Alphys’s neck to keep himself from falling.    
  
“I’m not very good at navigating this thing,” he said, his LED screens fading from hot pink to somber blue.  
  
“It’s okay,” Alphys said, helping Mettaton steady himself.  Slowly, she removed her hands from his frame.  He was bobbing back and forth a little, but was standing on his own.  She stepped a few paces back.  “Try moving forward.”  
  
Arms held out to steady himself, Mettaton inched his way forward.  Twice, he nearly fell, but he managed to pinwheel his arms and remain upright.  
  
“I think I’ve got it,” he said as he steered himself out the doorway.  “Enough to make my way to your laboratory, anyway.”  
  
“Good,” Alphys sighed.  She ushered him out the front door and locked up behind them.  “You don’t know how much I hate—how much I hate rushing this,” she said.  “All of this must be so new to you, I know it’s not f-fair, but I really didn’t know what else to do, I—“  
  
“Nonsense, darling,” Mettaton said.  His wheel bumped over a stray pebble in the road and he reeled forward, but he righted himself easily enough.  “I don’t have much of a clue what’s going on in your laboratory, but I can tell by the look on your face that it’s nothing good.  And if my new self might be able to help you out, well, we may as well try it and see, right?”  
  
Alphys allowed herself a small smile.  It was such a relief that he felt that way.  She was just certain that he’d be livid, once she asked him to make a premature debut in his robot form, but he’d been really understanding.  Maybe she shouldn’t expect the worst from people all the time.  “R-right,” she agreed.  “Oh, I’m so worried about Sans…”  
  
“While we’re walking, why don’t you explain this story to me?” Mettaton said.  He seemed to be getting better at maneuvering his metal self now; he avoided a shallow puddle with grace.  “I know you don’t know much, but how about you tell me what you can?”  
  
Alphys told him what she could, which wasn’t much.  She hadn’t been near the patients’ room to witness anything when it all began, so she didn’t have a good grasp of what kind of danger lurked within.  All she knew for certain was, if Doctor Gaster’s magic couldn’t subdue whatever was inside, the entire lab was in trouble.    
  
After Alphys finished her story, Mettaton said simply, “We need to hurry up and get back there, then.”  
  
Duh, she thought, but she’d never say that aloud.  Instead, she gave a nervous laugh and said:  “My little legs don’t go very fast…unfortunately.”  
  
Mettaton stopped, turning his frame toward her.  “Well, if I’m as strong as you say I am, then why don’t I just…”  
  
Mettaton scooped Alphys into his arms, damsel-in-distress-style.  Alphys flailed her arms, a small cry of surprise piping from her throat.  “W-what are you doing?” she stammered.  
  
“Carrying you, of course,” Mettaton said.  He started wheeling his way forward.  Alphys threw her arms around him and squeezed her eyes shut.  She didn’t like it one bit, but they were going twice as fast as she could.  
  
“Why, you’re light as a feather,” he mused, and Alphys could detect the awe in his voice.  “Isn’t that amazing?  This is very surreal for me, you know.”  
  
“Y-yeah,” Alphys agreed halfheartedly, feeling like she might vomit.    
  
The sensation that she was about to fall never left her as Mettaton navigated her through Hotland.  She scrambled out of his arms as soon as they reached the lab’s side entrance, thankful to be back on her own two feet.  She punched the unlock code into the door’s keypad and the two of them went inside.  
  
Even from a distance, Alphys could see that Sans was sprawled on his back.  He had a bony hand sticking up, a weak stream of magic trailing to the door.  Whatever was on the other side was rattling the door on its hinges, screaming frustrated, guttural cries.  Mettaton and Alphys hurried over to him.  
  
Sans lolled his head over and stared at them.  He cracked a faint smile.  “What’s that you got, there?” Sans said.  
  
“We’ll skip the pleasantries for the time being,” Mettaton said curtly.  “Shall I just…hold onto the door knob?”  
  
“Just be careful not to pull it off,” Alphys said as Mettaton crossed the hallway to the door.  He secured both hands around it.  As soon as he did so, Sans allowed his magic to die away, flopping his arm to the floor.  
  
“Yeah,” Sans said with a weak chuckle.  “Then we’d really have problems.”  
  
The door continued to rattle on its hinges, but Mettaton was keeping it closed.  “So,” he said, “what happens if this…thing…breaks the door _down_?  Right now I think it’s just pulling on it, but who know how long that will last.”  
  
“I’m hoping it won’t come to that,” Alphys said, “but…you’ve got a few…combat programs embedded in your coding.  Since it’s installed onto your motherboard, it should come pretty naturally to you, i-if you ever find yourself in a position where you need to…to use it.”  
  
“If you say so, I certainly trust you, darling,” he said, but his voice sounded a little unsure.  “I’m sure I can handle this for a moment, if you need to do something with your friend, there.”  
  
Sans heaved himself off the ground and struggled to his feet.  Alphys rushed over and put an arm around his shoulder to help steady him.  “Think I need a nap,” he said, sweat beading all around his skull.  
  
“You need a little more than that,” she said.  “Do you think you can walk down a flight of stairs?”  
  
“We’ll see, won’t we?” he said, wrapping his own arm around Alphys’s shoulders.  The two of them staggered their way over to the stairwell and down to the panic room.  
  
****  
  
 _I’m in hell, I’m in hell, I’m in hell._  
  
 _Should I put these things out of their misery?  I don’t know if I can make myself do that._  
  
 _But I can tell that they’re suffering.  Especially that one.  The one in the corner, the one writhing and squirming and howling._  
  
 _I saw it with my own eyes.  Five different patients—dogs, they were, I think they were family—were the first to melt.  Skin sagging away from bone, body parts detaching and falling to the floor in wet clumps.  Like wax figurines under a heat lamp.  The five of them, they reached out to one another for help…and when they did, what was left of them melted together.  Into that…that thing._  
  
 _“Awoooooooooo……..”_  
  
 _“I’m so sorry,” I mutter.  I know it can’t understand me, but I say it anyway.  At the sound of my voice, the thing’s ears prick up.  It no longer has any semblance of a face, but a gaping maw puckers and splutters in its place.  Something thick and slimy oozes from its face-hole._  
  
 _“Woooo………”_  
  
 _It has six stunted, knobby legs.  It staggers to its feet and lumbers its way toward me._  
  
 _There’s no way I can keep the door barred and shield myself all at once.  I don’t have the strength.  I’ve got to get out of here._  
  
 _I’ve got…I’ve got to…_  
  
****  
  
The first thing Wingdings became aware of was the sound of dozens of voices chatting in hushed tones all around him.  He could pick out a few words here and there, but they were too quiet to really hear them.  The next thing he noticed was a horrendous throbbing pain in his left temple and an electric coppery taste in his mouth.  Where was he?  He needed to open his eye sockets.  
  
He managed to crack them open.  Ceiling tiles.  He rolled his head over to the side and his vision was filled with a yellow face smiling tiredly at him.  
  
“How…do you feel?” she asked.  
  
He forced his aching bones to sit up.  He was on a hospital bed down in the panic room, so he must’ve fainted after all.  He knew he would, though.  There was no way he could deplete that much of his magic and remain conscious.    
  
“I’ll be fine,” he said.  He tried to grin at Alphys, to help put her at ease, but all he could muster was a wincing smirk.  She seemed to appreciate the gesture, anyhow; he noticed her shoulders sag in relief.  
  
His memory was still hazy, but the last thing he could remember was telling something—he couldn’t remember what—to Sans.  He glanced around the room, hoping to spot him.  
  
But he certainly hadn’t hoped to see his nephew in the gurney next to his.  His face fell.  
  
“H-he’s fine,” Alphys said hurriedly, noticing what Wingdings must be looking at.  “Just…very tired.”  
  
He slid his legs over the side of the hospital bed and willed himself to stand on them.  The pain in his head nearly sent him right back to the mattress, but he slapped a palm to his skull and commanded his legs to walk forward.  He went to Sans’s bedside and watched for the steady rise and fall of his nephew’s chest.  It was there.  He let out a relieved sigh.  
  
“What’s happened to him?” Wingdings asked Alphys.  
  
“I’m pretty sure the same thing that happened to you,” Alphys said.  “He fainted after he used up too much of his magic.”  
  
A twinge of worry wormed in his chest cavity.  Used all of his magic…on what?  
  
“What had he been doing with his magic?” Wingdings asked her.  “Have you got any idea?”  
  
“Well, after you…passed out,” Alphys said, “he was keeping the patients’ room door closed with it.  Like you’d been doing.”  
  
Wingdings’s eye sockets widened.  “Is there something keeping it closed now?”  
  
Alphys nodded.  “We’ve got a temporary, uh…fix,” she said, “but we’ll definitely need to think of something more permanent.”  
  
“Yes,” Wingdings said.  The throbbing in his head worsened as he nodded in agreement.  “Yes, we need to do that as soon as possible.  Come with me.”  
  
Oh, he ached.  In a perfect world, he’d allow himself a few more hours of much-needed rest, but there was work to be done.  He willed his legs to move toward the panic room’s exit.  
  
“D-don’t you think you need a little more rest, Doctor Gaster?” Alphys said, trotting after him.  “I’m sure I could cobble something together by myself, you don’t have to…”  
  
Her voice trailed away as Wingdings procured his ID card from his lab coat pocket and slid it through the door’s card reader.  The door slid to the side, into the wall.  “I’ve been in far worse shape than this,” he grinned.  “I’m sure I can manage.  Now, Alphys, you’re sure that door is secure enough, for the time being?”  
  
“For now,” she said cautiously, not sure where he was going with that question.  Her brow furrowed.  
  
“All right, then,” he said.  “We need to go ahead and evacuate everyone.  To send them home.  They can’t understand my voice, as you know, so you’ll need to relay some information to them for me.”  
  
A hush had come over the room, and all eyes were on the two head scientists.  Wingdings said, “Tell them that the threat in the patients’ room has been temporarily stabilized, and that we need them to go home for the day.  Also, that we’ll call them if we need them to come in tomorrow, but to assume that they’ll have the day off.”  
  
Alphys looked at Wingdings with uncertainty in her eyes, but she did as she was told, addressing the crowd with Doctor Gaster’s translated message.  
  
People started spouting questions at her, mostly a variation of “what the hell’s going on up there?” and Alphys looked up at Wingdings for support.  He shook his head.  “We’ll answer their questions later,” he said.  That didn’t really need any translating, but she told it to the crowd, anyway.  
  
“And one more thing, before we head up,” Wingdings said, taking on a slight edge to his voice.  “Tell them not to breathe a word of this to anyone.  I don’t want this getting back to King Asgore.  Not yet, anyway.”  
  
She told them.  The lab assistants and nurses were visibly unhappy with the lack of information, and Wingdings supposed he could understand that, but it couldn’t be helped.  At least they were safe.  Alive.  That was what really mattered.  
  
Wingdings turned his back to the crowd and stepped through the doorway.  “Follow me up.  Alphys, engage the door lock behind us, would you?”  
  
“What about Sans?” Alphys said.  “A-are we just gonna…leave him here?”  
  
This wouldn’t be the first time Wingdings had witnessed Sans using his magic to exhaustion.  He’d become a little numbed to it, if one were being completely honest.  He’d regain his consciousness in due time.  
  
“Best we not move him,” Wingdings said.  “We’ll come back to check on him, don’t you worry about that.  Come along.”  
  
The group of assistants and nurses made their way up the stairs and back out into the laboratory’s main hallway.  Wingdings slid his ID card through the primary exit, halting the lockdown.  Once all of the assistants and nurses had been evacuated, he felt a heavy weight lifting from his shoulders.  That was one thing to check off the list, at least.  Now, about that door…  
  
“What’s this contraption holding the door closed, Alphys?” Wingdings asked, walking up to expect the robotic rectangle keeping a vice grip on the door handle.    
  
“I’m sorry, sweetheart, I don’t speak French,” Mettaton replied.  At the sound of their voices, something slammed hard against the door and whined.  
  
“Huuuunh….wooooo……”  
  
“Whatever’s in there is _not_ very happy,” Mettaton said.  Faint scratching could be heard trailing down the door from the other side.  “If you make even the tiniest peep, it goes crazy.  Just look at this door, if you don’t believe me.”  
  
Wingdings and Alphys looked.  The metal door was warped and dented from top to bottom.  It wouldn’t hold much longer, that much was clear.  
  
“I’ll introduce you two later,” Alphys said.  “What should we do about this, Doctor Gaster?  The easiest thing would be to just…well, I…just be honest with me, are the patients still alive?”  At the word alive, her voice cracked.  
  
“The patients are what’s trying to tear the door down,” Wingdings said grimly.  “They’ve…mutated.”  
  
“W-what?” Alphys said.  “Mutated?  H-how can—“  
  
A short, white, slimy tendril stuck itself out of a crack in the doorway, waggling this way and that, as if sniffing the air.  It fell away from whatever it was attached to and slapped wetly against the floor.  
  
“Ew,” Mettaton said.  
  
“Oh my God,” Alphys said.  “They’re all…all of them are like that?”  
  
Wingdings nodded.  “I’d offer to explain later, but I’m afraid I don’t know much.  We’ll have to investigate this later.  Right now, we just need to make a temporary structure to put in front of this doorway, here.  Something to keep them in.”  
  
“Do we still have those steel scraps left in the storage room?” Alphys asked.  
  
No, of course not, Wingdings thought.  That would’ve been too easy.  He’d used those steel scraps weeks ago to build his Gaster Blaster.  
  
“No, I’ve used those,” he sighed, putting a hand to his skull.  This was doing nothing to help his aching head, naturally.  “Run and get your soldering iron, Alphys, wherever it is.  I’ll find something we can use.  Meet me back here.”  
  
“And I’ll just stand here and look pretty,” Mettaton said.  Alphys shot him a warning look, but since she couldn’t read his facial expressions anymore—he had none—she had no idea whether it had been effective or not.  
  
“Got it,” Alphys said, running off down the hall to fetch her soldering iron.    
  
Wingdings made his way into his lab, the one he and Alphys and Sans shared, and stood in front of his work table.  He tapped his foot.  He needed an idea to come to him, and quickly.  He ran a hand across his array of tools—sometimes that helped, when he was stumped.  The tip of his index finger trailed thoughtfully down the length of a crowbar.  
  
A crowbar…hmm…  
  
He grabbed the crowbar and, without thinking another thing of it, jimmied the lab door off its hinges.  It clattered to the floor with a metallic clang.  Three or four more doors, and they’d be in business.  Alphys could solder them on top of one another, in front of the nearly-broken patients’ room door, and surely that would do the trick.  
  
It would be ugly, and the monster-things would be temporarily trapped in there, but their first priority was to keep those things from getting loose in the lab.  It was a really far-fetched idea, but stranger things had happened.  Much stranger.  
  
Ignoring the screaming ache in his body, he went to work yanking off the door to the hematology lab.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I write dialogue, I obviously imagine what their voices sound like as I write it. To me, Wingdings--Doctor Gaster--typically sounds like a 40-year-old, intellectual cigar-smoker. Other times, he sounds like Bonzi Buddy. Yall remember Bonzi Buddy? Look it up on Youtube if you don't. Anyway, I can't decide which voice suits him more. Heh.


	6. Migration

“Sans, you look awful!” Papyrus wailed, scrambling up from his seat on the couch and bounding to the doorway.  He was wearing a green-and-white-striped pajama set.  “It’s three in the morning!  What’s Uncle thinking, keeping you this late?”  
  
Sans craned his head up to look at his little brother. Papyrus’s face was pinched with worry.  And rightly so; Sans had twenty-seven missed calls from Papyrus on his phone, and he’d only noticed this fact a couple minutes ago.   
  
“Sorry, bro,” he said.  “Just, uh…lotsa stuff goin on today, y’know?  I guess the time just got away from me.”  
  
 _Liar._  
  
He hated lying to Papyrus, but telling his brother the truth would only cause the younger skeleton a lot of unnecessary worry.  It’d be best if Sans…edited the truth.  For now, at least.  
  
“I called your cell phone and you didn’t answer,” Papyrus frowned, a touch of accusation in his voice.  He knelt down and threw his arms around Sans, squeezing him into a hug.    
  
“I know,” Sans said into Papyrus’s pajama shirt.  “I’m sorry.”  Well, at least _that_ was truthful.  
  
Papyrus released Sans from his vice grip.  “You’ve missed dinner by several hours,” Papyrus said.  “I’d offer to cook you something, but you look more sleepy than hungry.”  
  
Sans shrugged out of his lab coat, letting it pool to the floor.  He kicked his slippers off.  “Ain’t that a fact,” he said, dragging his feet across the carpet and toward the stairs.  “I’m bone tired.”  
  
“Oh, Sans,” Papyrus said wearily, “it’s too late at night for your jokes.  Or maybe too early in the morning.  Either way.  Let’s go to bed.”  
  
Sans curled a hand around the stair banister, feeling the cool of the polished wood under his palm.  God, he was so tired.  It took all he had to make it home from the lab.  The fifteen or so stairs he would need to climb to reach his bed seemed so daunting, so impossible to climb, so—  
  
Hands reached under his arms and lifted him up, suspending him a couple feet off the ground.  He was too tired to question it.  Papyrus threw his brother over his shoulder like a sack of flour and lugged him up the stairs.  
  
Sans was plopped down in front of his bedroom door.  “Thanks, Pap,” he said, managing a smile.  “G’night.”  
  
“Good night, brother,” Papyrus said.  He opened his mouth to say something, but thought better of it.  He turned on his heel and went down the hall to his bedroom.  
  
Sans went into his room and shut the door behind him.  He didn’t even bother to turn the light on; he could pretty well navigate his room in the dark.  Taking slow, careful steps with his arms outstretched, he inched his way to his bed.  When his fingertips brushed the plush top of his bare mattress, he rolled his body onto it and shut his eyes immediately.  Sleep came to him quickly, though it wasn’t a deep sleep—it never was.  Mostly, it was nightmares.  
  
And after a day like he’d had, there was plenty of fresh material for his fitful dreams.  
  
****  
  
Sans ambled into the lab at about 2 in the afternoon.  It was eerily quiet, except for some bumps and gurgles from the patients’ room.  Several hunks of warped metal had been welded into the patients’ room doorway.  Not very aesthetically pleasing, but it seemed like it was getting the job done.  He made his way into his lab office.  
  
Uncle Wingdings and Alphys were both there.  Alphys had a squat, thick comic book in her hands, wavy with water damage, which she slapped shut when she saw Sans come in.  Wingdings was leaned against his work table, fiddling absently with what looked like some kind of circuit board.  When Sans entered the room, Wingdings placed the contraption on his desktop and crossed his arms.  
  
“How’s your head?” Wingdings asked, and the serious edge to his voice was not lost on Sans.  
  
“Oh, I’m pretty much better now,” Sans said with a shrug.  “Just needed a good cat nap.  You feelin alright, Unc?”  
  
“I’ve got one hell of a crick in my neck,” he grumbled, craning the affected area left and right, “but I’ll survive.  When you get settled in, the three of us need to talk.”  
  
Well, that didn't sound very good.  But Sans wasn’t surprised.  What with yesterday’s goings-on and the craziness that ensued, the air needed to be cleared.  He went over to his desk, pulled his chair out, and fell into it.  “Alrighty.  What’s first?”  
  
Wingdings uncrossed his arms for a moment to rub at his face with his bony palms.  He re-crossed them.  “I suppose I’ll start from the very beginning.  I’m sure you’ve both gathered this by now, but I was the one who triggered the lockdown.”  
  
“I thought it was probably you,” Alphys agreed, “b-but what, exactly, happened?  Sans and I left this room to go and check on the flowers, but we’d only been gone for, what, five minutes?  What…what happened?”  
  
Wingdings pushed himself away from his work table and began to take slow, aimless steps as he spoke.  “I heard a bang coming from the patients’ room.  Several of the hospital beds had been knocked over, and I’m sure that’s what made the sound.  The patients, they were all…”  He shook his head, a frustrated sigh passing through his mouth.  “It appeared as if they were…melting.”  
  
Alphys winced.  “Melting?”  
  
“That’s the best way I can think of to describe it,” Wingdings said.  He picked up an adjustable set of pliers from a nearby table, grabbing a handle in each hand.  He fidgeted with it.  _Click-click-click-click-click_.  He sat them back down again.    
  
“As one can imagine,” Wingdings continued, “they were extremely…alarmed at their predicament.  They made a rush for the door.  But something about them…something changed.  It was almost like, as their bodies started to decompose, so did their minds.  They reverted back to something primal.”  
  
Witnessing something like that firsthand must’ve been harrowing, Sans figured.  He could tell by his uncle’s mannerisms that reliving the experience was troubling.  He almost didn’t want to ask Wingdings any more questions about the matter, but he knew he needed to.    
  
“I’m guessing they got violent?” Sans said, picking over his words carefully before he said them.  
  
“Yes,” Wingdings said.  “But it wasn’t only that.  Some of the patients came into contact with one another.  And when they did…they melted in _to_ one another.  They fused together.  It’s like they became something different entirely.”  Again, he shook his head, as if that would clear the images from his head.  “I didn’t want anyone to come into contact with them, lest their bodies meld with them, too.”  
  
“Oh, God,” Alphys said, “that’s horrible.  Those poor, poor patients…a-as if they hadn't been through enough already and now…this.”  
  
“Don’t suppose there’s anything we can do for them at this point, is there, Unc?” Sans asked, his voice barely above a mumble.  
  
“I doubt it,” Wingdings said.  “I suppose we could take a few samples and run a few tests while the lab’s empty, but after what I saw yesterday, I’m none too hopeful.”  
  
Alphys shuffled through some papers on her desk, but she wasn’t really looking at them.  She was just doing it for something to do.  “It must’ve been the Determination injections,” she said, “it must’ve been.  That was the only thing making their bodies unstable.  I knew it was only a matter of time before they d-died, but I…I never thought the Determination would tear their bodies down like that.”  
  
“I guess their molecular composition just couldn’t hold it together any longer,” Sans murmured, eyes downcast.  Alphys was right.  It was the Determination that did it.  Day after day…he had pumped the patients’ veins full of it, and now…  
  
A few moments of uncomfortable silence passed between the three of them.  Wingdings was the one that finally broke it.  “So,” he sighed, “what we need to decide now is this:  do we put them out of their misery, or do we wait it out and let them die off on their own?”  
  
Sans closed his eyes.  This was bad.  So, so bad.  Not a single thing had gone right with this experiment.  Not even the damn flower had stayed where it was supposed to.  Now he had a choice to contribute to, and neither of the options sat very well with his moral code.  
  
It was a lose-lose situation.  
  
“Uh,” he said, rubbing his forehead with the flat of his hand, “I don’t think I can do it.  No, I _know_ I can’t do it.  Kill em, I mean.  I can’t.  And I don’t think either of you could, either.”  
  
That last sentence came out a little harsher than he’d meant it to, but he was tired, and stressed, and it was too late to take it back.  Luckily, neither of them seemed to take much notice.    
  
“No,” Alphys said with a shake of her head, “I-I know I couldn’t do it, either.  Maybe we could just…wait and see how things turn out?”  She sighed deeply.  “I don’t know.  What’s your thinking, Doctor Gaster?”  
  
“Well, let’s look at what we know,” Wingdings said.  “They’re dangerous.  They’re violent.  They’re most likely in a lot of pain.  And yet…”  He closed his eye sockets for a few seconds.  He re-opened them.  “And yet there may be a way to save them.  To reverse this hellacious plague we’ve unleashed upon them.  I don’t think I can end their lives before I’ve explored every possible option.  Even if that’s the most humane thing to do.  I know I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”  
  
Sans nodded thoughtfully.  “So,” he said, “you think, maybe, get a sample from one of the patients, run some tests on it…maybe cross-reference that data with the chemical compounds in the Determination serum…”  
  
“Analyze anything and everything we can,” Alphys finished for him.  “And see if we can find _some_ thing to help them.”  
  
“I agree,” Wingdings said.  “But in the meantime, we need to find a more secure place to put these monsters.  Someplace we can travel in and out.  A place where we can actively observe them.”  
  
“The biggest room we’ve got is that lecture classroom thing, the one where we did all the safety training,” Sans said, thinking aloud.  “We never use that room, anyway.  Just clear the desks out, slap a reinforced steel door on there, and I think we’re in business.”  
  
Wingdings increased the speed of his pacing, circling around the room with eyes narrowed and a thoughtful finger crooked at his chin.  “You’re right, we don’t much use that room for anything.  And constructing a suitable door would be fairly simple.  But our biggest problem is, how do we transport these creatures from one room to the other?”  
  
That _was_ a problem.  If they were as violent as Wingdings said they were—and as violent as they sounded, pounding and scratching and howling against the door that held them back—getting them to go anywhere was going to be tricky.  
  
“I don’t think there would be a way to physically subdue them,” Wingdings added.  “Any kind of restraints would either absorb into their bodies or fall right off.  I think we have no choice but to lure them out.”  
  
Sans imagined popping the makeshift door off of the patients’ room.  No doubt, those creatures would come bursting out, if their efforts to bang the door down were any indication.  And if they really were violent, then, surely they’d follow somebody who was running down the hallway toward the lecture hall…  
  
“Sans, I know what you’re thinking, and the answer is no,” Wingdings said sternly.  Damn, he was good.  Familial intuition, Sans supposed.  “It’s too dangerous.  I’ll do it.  I’ll get them to follow me.  And if something goes wrong, well…I’ve got ways I can defend myself against them.”  
  
Though he said it a little cryptically, Sans was pretty sure his uncle planned on having the Gaster Blaster on standby.  Probably a good idea, all things considered.  Wingdings’s magic was powerful on its own, but who knew how strong those things really were?  Hell, Sans didn’t even know what they looked like, just what they sounded like, and he knew they were nothing to be taken lightly.    
  
“You sure about that?” Sans said.  “Seems pretty risky…”  
  
“I know,” Wingdings conceded.  “It is.  But, once again, we’re short on options.  I say we give it a try.  And if worse comes to worst, I’ll…”  But he didn’t finish the sentence.  He didn’t have to.  
  
 _He’ll just kill them._  
  
Wingdings’s demeanor suddenly changed.  He squared his shoulders and forced the sour look from his face.  “Well, we won’t get anything done moping in here,” he declared, marching for the door.  “Let’s get that lecture hall cleaned out.  Both of you, follow me.”  
  
****  
  
The Gaster Blaster hovered in midair at Wingdings’s shoulder, bobbing serenely.  The thing seemed to grin down at Alphys and Sans, its beady eyes watching their every move.  
  
“What is that?” Alphys said, awestricken.    
  
“It’s a weapon, and a very powerful one,” Wingdings said.  Much as he had a few days prior, Sans heard the pride sprinkled across those words.  “Don’t worry,” he assured her, “it’s been field-tested.”  He shot Sans a knowing look.  The corner of Sans’s mouth twitched in acknowledgement.  
  
He was no longer using the rolling cart to maneuver it, Sans noticed.  His uncle must be keeping it aloft with his magic.  A little known fact about Wingdings was that he had a flare for theatrics, when he was comfortable enough around someone to flaunt it.  Sans just hoped Wingdings wouldn’t overdo it…  
  
“H-hopefully you won’t have to use that thing,” Alphys said.  “I’m hoping that this won’t end in, uh…fisticuffs?”  
  
“You and me both,” Sans said.  He had a blowtorch in hand.  “We ready for this door to come off?”  
  
Wingdings stepped behind Sans, near the doorway.  The Gaster Blaster floated behind him.  “Ready,” he said.  
  
Sans looked at the other scientist.  “Alphys?”  
  
At the sound of her name, she tensed, balling her hands into fists.  “As I’ll ever be, I think.”  She scooted against the wall, a safe distance away from the door.  
  
“O-kay,” Sans said. igniting the blowtorch.  “Watch your eyes,” he advised, though he had no eye protection of his own.  
  
Slowly, the soldering that held the metal hunks together began to soften.  Sans put the blowtorch down long enough to procure a crowbar at his feet, yanking the loosened metal out of the way and tossing it to the side.  When he got the first piece off, it became apparent that there were three more that would have to be removed.    
  
Just as he put the crowbar down and was about to pick the blowtorch up, a white slimy thing poked its way through the eight-inch space in the doorway.  
  
The thing had two smaller appendages sticking up from its top—kind of like cat ears, Sans thought.  A wide orifice between its “ears” quivered and pulsated, as if it were sniffing the air.  
  
“Awuuuuh,” the slimy thing whined, the noise emitting from its hole.  
  
It was a sound unlike anything Sans had ever heard before, like something birthed from a demon.  It twisted in his stomach and made him want to hurl.  His eyes widened.  “Holy shit,” he whispered under his breath.    
  
Wingdings stepped in front of Sans.  “Best you let me take it from here,” he said.  His eyes never leaving the creature, Wingdings cautiously stooped down to pick up the blowtorch.  
  
And then, a series of things happened very quickly.  
  
The creature emitted an ear-piercing screech, slamming itself against the doorway.  The weakened metal started to give, the opening getting steadily wider as the thing thrashed at it.    
  
Sans backed away from the door and stood arm-to-arm with Alphys.  He felt his magic stirring deep within him, readying up.  Hopefully, he wouldn't have to use it, but his body was preparing him for it nonetheless.  
  
The creature gave the makeshift door a final shove and it banged to the floor, warped and bent.  It took one, two steps out of the room on wobbly, disjointed legs.  Wingdings took two paces back.  
  
Much of the creature was still concealed within the room, but Sans could tell that it was at least seven feet tall.  The part of its body that had poked through the opening, the part with the ears and the mouth-hole, was high up, so it was presumably the thing’s head.  It took another step forward, it’s face-hole twitching.  Sans could hear faint snuffing sounds.  
  
“Wooo…” it moaned.  It swiveled its head and looked in Sans and Alphys’s direction.  It took a step toward them.    
  
Taking a sharp breath, Sans ignited his hand in blue flame.  He eyed the thing carefully, preparing himself to attack.  
  
Wingdings clapped his hands together, to try and get the creature to look in his direction, but it didn't work.  Its face was fixed on the two smaller scientists.    
  
“Over here!” Wingdings said sharply, stamping his foot.  “Say!”  
  
His actions didn’t affect the creature in the slightest.  It shambled a little closer to Sans and Alphys.  
  
“Don’t move,” Wingdings commanded as he inched toward the two of them, choosing his footing carefully.  The Gaster Blaster began to emit a lavender-colored aura, humming softly.  “I’ll—“  
  
“W-wait!” Alphys cried.  “Don’t shoot!  Or, uh, don’t—!  Hang on for just a second!”  
  
Sans took his eyes off the creature for a fleeting moment to glance at Alphys.  What was she playing at, here?  Her face was a somewhat pinched look of confidence, with sheer terror looming just beneath the surface.  
  
“Hey, there, fella,” she said gently.  Puckering its face-hole, the creature snuffed in her general direction.  “It’s been awhile since…s-since you’ve eaten anything, h-huh?  I-I’ve got a little something…”  
  
Hands trembling, she reached into her lab coat pocket and brought out a snack-sized bag of poptato chisps.  Ever-so-gently, she pulled the bag apart.    
  
The creature made a sharp, sudden movement.  Both Sans and the Gaster Blaster twitched in response, but an attack wasn’t necessary.  It was…  
  
…bending low on its front legs, its haunches high in the air.  Sans’s eye sockets could be deceiving him, but it looked to him like the thing was attempting an excited wiggle.  
  
 _Like a dog._  
  
Suddenly, Sans had an idea.  
  
“Lemme see those chisps, Alphys,” Sans said.  She seemed glad to hand them over, like she had been absolved of her duty of feeding the hulking thing in front of her.  Sans took the bag and waggled it enticingly.  
  
“Sans,” Wingdings warned.  
  
“Cover me, Unc,” Sans said, easing away from the wall.  The thing seemed to be transfixed on the poptato chisps in Sans’s outstretched hand, following the bag’s movement with its head.  
  
“Hi, big guy,” Sans said in soft voice one reserves for animals and small children.  “Lookie here.  Ya hungry?”  
  
He reached into the bag and tossed a chisp to the floor.  The thing bounded after it, lowering its face-hole to the ground and literally inhaling it.  
  
Good Lord.  
  
Sans backed a few more steps down the hall, Wingdings following suit.  “Was it good?” he asked the creature.  “You want another one?  Huh, you want another one?”  
  
He underhanded another chisp to the floor.  The thing stumbled after it, sucking it up as soon as it touched ground.    
  
Somehow, this convoluted scheme appeared to be working.  Sans made a trail of poptato chisps down the hallway, the creature gobbling them up, following him obediently.  
  
“I think I got this guy,” Sans said to his uncle.  They were about halfway to their destination.  He reached into an inner pocket of his lab coat and procured a bar of chocolate.  “Why don’t you guard the patients’ door and make sure no more of those guys come out?  Take this just in case.”  
  
Wingdings looked at Sans with uncertainty, torn as to whether he should stay and ensure his nephew’s safety, or if he should watch after Alphys and the remaining creatures within the patients’ room.  He took two seconds to think it over.  He grabbed the candy bar out of Sans’s grasp.  
  
“Please be careful,” Wingdings said.  His face was unreadable.  
  
“You, too,” Sans grinned.  He turned his attention back to the creature eagerly awaiting more chisps in front of him.  “You want some more?  You want some more, huh?”  
  
He made it to the doorway of the lecture hall.  By that time, there were about three chisps left in the bag.  He tossed the remaining chisps through the doorway and the creature bounded after them, whitish liquid—slobber?—dripping in its wake.  Once the monster was inside, he slammed and locked the door.  
  
Relief washed over him.  “Whew,” he muttered to himself as he made his way back down the hall.  
  
The other creatures were milling about the room’s exit, peering out, but none of them dared to cross the doorway.  A birdlike thing bobbed its head out, stabbing the air with its beak, but otherwise the creatures seemed to be placated.  For the time being, anyhow.  
  
“Welp,” Sans said, “I think we know how to get these guys to move for us.”  He turned to face Alphys.  “Hey, how’d you know that thing was just hungry, anyway?”  
  
Alphys gave a nervous shrug.  “I-I just figured…y’know…they hadn’t eaten in at least 24 hours…and that one was sniffing the air like he was looking for some food…”  
  
“A risky move, Alphys,” Wingdings said, “but it paid off in the end.”  Sans swore he heard admiration in the older skeleton’s tone.    
  
Wingdings reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a handful of coins.  “Here, Alphys, take these down to the vending machine and get us some more chisps.  Sans and I will make sure they stay in there while you fetch them.”  
  
“Okay,” she nodded, allowing a smile to cross her face.  She cupped her hands and Wingdings trickled the coins into it.  “I’ll hurry,” she promised, trotting off down the hall.  
  
Alongside his uncle, Sans kept an eye on the patients’ room.  The remaining creatures seemed to be somewhat calm, albeit restless.  They shuffled back and forth in front of the doorway, and it seemed to Sans like they were debating on whether they should leave the safety of the room or not.  Apparently, the only aggressive one was the creature he’d just led away.  The others seemed jittery and confused, but probably harmless.  
  
 _Probably_ being the key word, there.  He wasn’t dropping his guard just yet, and neither was Uncle Wingdings.  The Gaster Blaster still bobbed at his shoulder, ready to fire if need be.  By the looks of things, though, it wasn’t going to come to that.  
  
“You haven’t told Papyrus about any of this, have you?” Wingdings asked him.  
  
Sans shook his head.  “No way,” he said.  “He’d worry too much.”  
  
“Indeed he would,” Wingdings agreed, smiling softly.  “I’m sure it’s tempting to discuss the day’s events with him when you get home every evening, but…let’s not mention this to him unless we have to.”  
  
“Agreed,” Sans said with a nod.  
  
Even without seeing these things firsthand, even with Sans just describing them, it would almost definitely give Papyrus nightmares.  Sans knew all about those.  If he could shield his brother from them, even if it meant lying to him a little bit, he’d do it.  
  
He just hoped he could keep all of this from him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a long chapter! It could either be one long chapter, or two short chapters, and I think it flows better if I leave it whole.


	7. The Core

Sans woke up to the sound of screaming.  
  
His bedroom door flew open.  Papyrus burst inside and slapped his hand against the light switch, flooding the room in bright yellow.  Sans clamped his eyes shut.  
  
“Sans!” Papyrus panted, hurrying over to his older brother’s bedside.  “Sans, look at me!  What’s wrong?!”  
  
It was then that Sans realized that it was he, himself that was screaming.  He stopped.  Opened his eyes.  Stared at his brother.  
  
He was in his bedroom, sitting upright in bed.  Each of his hands was gripping a fistful of an old quilt.  Papyrus was there, staring down at him in worry, in fear.    
  
He was home.  Not…not… _there_.  
  
Shit.  
  
“A bad dream,” he breathed, more to himself than to his brother.  “I was just…”  He swallowed.  “…Having a bad dream.”  He rubbed fitfully at his face, trying to clear his head.  
  
Papyrus’s whole body sagged in relief.  “Oh, thank goodness,” he sighed.  Something fell from his hand and hit the carpet with a dull _thunk_.  He didn’t seem to notice.  “You were screaming like you were getting murdered.”  He took a seat on the edge of the bed.  “You were just having a nightmare?”  
  
“Yeah,” Sans said.  It was taking a minute for that fact to sink in, but he was feeling steadily better about it.  “Yeah, I’m fine, bro.  I’m sorry.”  
  
“No need to apologize, brother,” Papyrus said with a warm smile.  “You didn’t mean to.  You were sleeping, after all.”    
  
Papyrus leaned down to pick up what he’d dropped into the floor—a sizable figurine of a sexy robot.  Its left arm was skewed at a crazy angle.  Papyrus adjusted it back into place.  “This was the first thing I grabbed when I heard you yelling,” Papyrus said.  “It’s the heaviest one I have.”  
  
“You were gonna beat my murderer to death with that, huh?” Sans said, and he allowed a grin to cross his face.  A relieved sigh shook his frame.  “Heh.  What would I do without you, Pap?”  
  
Menial conversation passed between the two of them for a few more minutes, until Sans felt more-or-less back to normal.  Papyrus seemed to sense this.  He gave his brother a pat on the shoulder and stood up from the bed.  His robot figurine held securely in the crook of his arm, he turned Sans’s bedroom light back off and shut the door.  
  
Not once did Papyrus ask what the nightmare was about, and Sans was glad for that.  He would’ve had to make something up, if the question were posed.  There was no way he was ever telling Papyrus about the amalgamates.  
  
Yes.  They had a name now.  The root of the word, amalgam—it meant a mixture of something.  Amalgamate, strictly speaking, was a verb meaning to mix something together.  Uncle Wingdings took to calling the poor bastards holed up in the lecture hall “amalgamates”.  And who was Sans to argue about that?  It was pretty insensitive, but it wasn’t like they could understand anything anymore, anyway; they wouldn’t be getting offended by it anytime soon.  
  
The first amalgamate that Sans had come into contact with was the doglike creature.  The one with the six disjointed legs, the face nothing but a puckering hole.  Back when the experiments began, five dog patients had been under his care.  He assumed the five of them melded together to make the hulking behemoth.    
  
This creature, though harrowing in appearance, was actually the least frightening one.  It had been stripped of its higher processes and reduced to the most basic canine personality traits—wanting to fetch, to be petted, to inhale treats—but it wasn’t that bad once you got over the outward look of the thing.  
  
Some of the others, though…  
  
The most horrifying amalgamate—to Sans, anyway—was the one with sharp teeth the size of fists attached to the outside of its mouth.  It could barely support the weight of its own head, it was so huge.  A row of teeth ran down its spine.  Its body was nothing more than a length of doughy tissue with two appendages, presumably arms, sticking out on either side.  When it moved, it held its arm-things out for balance, leaving a viscous trail in its wake.    
  
It was frightening to look at, no question about that, but that wasn’t exactly what bothered Sans.  The previous day, when Sans had been feeding the amalgamates, this particular creature had attempted to talk to him.  
  
A low gurgle sounded from the toothy creature’s mouth.  Sans had eyed it warily, unsure of what it was trying to do.  With obvious difficulty, its disgusting mouth formed these words:  
  
“Welcome…to…my…special…hell.”  
  
_Welcome to my special hell_.  Its voice had been wet-sounding, phlegmy.  Sans couldn’t get it out of his head.  He heard it over and over again on an endless loop.  
  
_Welcome to my special hell, welcome to my special hell, welcome to my_ —  
  
His uncle had a knack for noticing the oddest of details about things, and as he was taking samples from the amalgamates, he mentioned to Sans that the toothy one gave off a smell exactly like that of a fresh loaf of lemon bread.  
  
Thus, the toothy creature was nicknamed Lemon Bread.  
  
His nightmare had been about Lemon Bread.  Slithering toward him on its snaky length of body, lumpy arms outstretched, reaching for him.  His legs couldn’t move.    
_Welcome to my special hell, welcome to my special hell, welcome to my_ —  
  
Now that he thought of it, he’d been screaming in his dream as it grabbed him.  He suppose that part had carried over into the real world.  
  
Night terrors were nothing new to him, but he hadn’t woken up screaming in years.  For awhile, there, he’d substituted the screaming for sleep-walking (and, occasionally, sleep-eating), which was a lot less problematic than waking up Papyrus in the middle of the night, scaring the daylights out of his brother for nothing.  
  
More than anything in the world, Sans wanted to shield Papyrus from all of the negative things he possibly could.  A lofty goal, he knew; but through all their hardships growing up, Papyrus had stayed so positive, so… _happy_.  And when Sans was lucky enough, sometimes that happiness rubbed off on himself.  Maybe he was just being selfish, then, protecting his brother from as many evils as he could.    
  
But damned if he wouldn’t keep trying.  
  
He knew he wouldn’t get any more sleep after that.  He blindly patted his bedside table until his hand brushed across the smooth surface of his portable gaming console.  He grabbed it and turned it on, the backlit screen filling the room with a gentle white glow.  He settled his head back into his pillow and held the game above his head, clacking away at the buttons until the sun rose.  
  
****  
  
Alphys had a fear of telephones, but she had no other choice but to answer the calls that came through to the lab.  There was a receptionist that answered the phone, usually, but Wingdings hadn’t allowed any of the other employees to come back to work yet.  Wingdings couldn’t do it, since no one but his family and Alphys could understand what he was saying.  And Sans…Alphys wasn’t sure where he was, exactly, but she could hear the muffled sound of his snores coming from somewhere or other.  
  
The telephone rang again.  Alphys jumped in her seat.  Mentally bracing herself, she picked up the receiver from its cradle and held it to her ear.  
  
“H-hello?—Oh, hi, Mr. Drake—she’s, uh, well….definitely needing some more…m-medical attention on our part—we’re not sure when, Mr. Drake, I’m sorry—um, n-no, I’m afraid we don’t allow—“  
  
The person on the other end started yelling.  Alphys held the phone away from her ear until he stopped.  “I understand how frustrated you are,” she said, “b-but—hello?  Mr. Drake, are you there?  Mr. Drake?”  
  
A tiny click and a dial tone.  He’d hung up on her.  “Thank God,” she said under her breath, sitting the phone receiver back on its cradle.  She wasn’t sure how much more of that she could’ve handled.  
  
“Well, you can’t blame them for trying to get ahold of us,” Wingdings said.  He was leaned against the wall, his left leg propped over his right.  Sighing, he reached a hand into an inner lab coat pocket and procured a slim cigarette case and a flip lighter.  He popped the cigarette case open, grabbed one out of there, and jabbed it irritably in his mouth.  With a well-practiced flick of his wrist, he opened up the lighter and held the tiny flame to the cigarette tip.    
  
“Hey, uh, Unc?” Sans’s voice said from seemingly nowhere.  The lump on Sans’s desk lifted its head up.  What Alphys genuinely thought was a pile of trash was really just Sans, inadvertently camouflaged due to the fact that he wasn’t wearing a lab coat that day.  His pale blue hoodie looked uncannily like crumpled sheets of blueprint paper heaped onto the desk.  The younger skeleton obviously hadn’t had a good night’s sleep again.  “Maybe it’s not such a great idea to smoke in here.  Y’know, with all the noxious chemicals, and whatnot.”  
  
A stream of smoke blew from Wingdings’s nose-hole.  “I suppose you’re right,”  he said, pushing away from the wall.  “I’m going outside for a moment, then.  You children play nice.”  
  
****  
  
The fact that Wingdings had no choice but to set up his lab in Hotland had always irritated him.  The weather there was horrendous.  He’d only taken three steps outside and beads of sweat were already dotting his forehead.  Still, he was desperate for a smoke, and even more desperate to take a little walk to clear his head.    
  
He walked along a rocky pathway.  On either side of him, about ten feet down, magma flowed in lazy currents.  This magma was the source of all the Underground’s power, harnessed with Wingdings’s own invention.  It hadn’t been too long ago that the Underground was going through such an extreme energy crisis that, some days, he’d had to do his work by candlelight.  The daunting energy shortage led him to invent the Core.  
  
Really, it was a pretty simple process.  He had large blocks of ice imported from Snowdin, his hometown.  These blocks of ice were deposited into a power plant.  The power plant was made of tungsten, which could withstand magma’s obviously high temperature, so the plant itself was plopped directly into the molten sea.  Magma flowed into the power plant while ice was dropped down into it from above.  This created steam, which was then captured and turned into geothermal energy.  
  
Due to this ingenious creation, King Asgore was duly impressed with Wingdings and had appointed him the Royal Scientist.  Wingdings hadn’t even been aware of such a position, but he took it gladly.    
  
Shame it was so hot, though.  God, he missed Snowdin so much.  He flicked his spent cigarette into the magma below, where it instantaneously burned to nothingness.  
  
He lit another cigarette and kept walking, ambling along the path until he reached the Core Power Plant.  It was almost entirely self-regulating, but there was still a handful of monsters inside to make sure everything kept running smoothly.  Mostly, they just sat around and played canasta.  He thought about popping in and seeing how things were holding up, but he didn’t much feel like it.  Truth be told, he felt uneasy about leaving Sans and Alphys alone with the amalgamates for too long.  They were well-contained, but he wasn’t the type to leave things like that to chance.  
  
Sans was as good as his own son, and Alphys…well, she was the same age as Sans, and they’d been friends since elementary school.  Calling her a “family friend” seemed too distant a title for her.  At any rate, those two doofuses felt like his own children, and he didn’t like the thought of leaving his kids so close to the jaws of death.  
  
He’d been staring up at the Core, pondering things in thoughtful silence, when he heard a strange voice behind him.  
  
“Howdy!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, this one was a little short. I had to cut it off there, since I'd be getting into a whole other can of worms if I kept on going.....
> 
> I had some other stuff written in here, rambling about Sans and Papyrus growing up and Gaster (Wingdings) raising them, but I erased it. I think that's for another story ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	8. Roots

Had Wingdings been in the possession of any skin, he surely would've jumped out of it. His teeth clamped down hard on the butt of his cigarette, the magic within him fluttering wildly in his ribcage. Once the initial shock of being snuck up on had passed, though, and he'd had half a second to get his bearings, he realized that he recognized the voice. He turned around.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," King Asgore chuckled, clapping a meaty hand on the skeleton’s shoulder. "Didn't mean to scare you, there."

Wingdings couldn't say anything in reply to the king even if he'd wanted to; his speech patterns could only be understood by family and, recently, Alphys. Luckily, he'd become an expert at body language over the span of his lifetime. He smiled and stuck his hand out for Asgore to shake. The king grabbed Wingdings's hand and jangled it gladly, nearly dislocating the skeleton's shoulder in the process.

"Your nephew said you'd be out here," Asgore said. "I tried to call, but the line was busy every time I rang. Anyhow, I think it's best if we talk about this face-to-face."

Anything King Asgore wanted to talk about face-to-face couldn't be good. Most likely, he'd gotten wind of the hideous creatures slinking around in the lab's lecture hall--the so-called Amalgamates.

Word travelled fast in the Underground. If the news that unethical experiments were being conducted had gotten around, there would no doubt be an uproar. And it would be directed right at King Asgore. All Wingdings could do at that point was nod in understanding. He'd pressed his luck with his experiments so many times. He may lose his job for this one.

"Now, I know we won't get much talking done if it's just you and I," Asgore said. "So, if you don't mind, why don't the two of us...head back..."

Asgore's eyes had drifted away from Wingdings and were staring at something above the skeleton's head. The king's face was pinched in confusion. He squinted.

"Say," Asgore said, pointing a clawed finger up at the Core's roof. "Do you see that? What do you suppose that is, Doctor Gaster?"

Wingdings turned around and looked where Asgore was pointing. His eye sockets weren't what they used to be, but he thought he saw something dangling from the railing of the Core's roof.

"I see something," he muttered, more for his own benefit than the king's. "I just don't know what."

It was hard to tell anything about it from such a distance. It looked like a small yellow splotch attached to--or maybe hanging from--the railing that went around the Core's roof. Though it was difficult to judge, it appeared to be moving ever-so-slightly. Swaying, maybe. It was probably just a piece of trash stuck up there--one of Sans's food wrappers, or something--fluttering in the sweltering breeze. But judging by the horrified look on King Asgore's face, he didn't think whatever was up there to be quite so mundane as garbage.

"You don't think that's somebody up there, do you, Doctor?" Asgore asked. Wingdings looked up at the thing again. No, he really doubted it was any kind of living creature...then again, there was no way for him to be sure. It definitely could be. In response to the king's question, he shrugged.

"Oh..." King Asgore groaned. He furrowed his brow. "Oh, I hate to waste your time, Doctor Gaster, but I absolutely must go up there and check for myself. I know I'll never sleep tonight if I don't." He began to walk toward the Core, and Wingdings felt obligated to follow him. So he did.

"Just between you and me," King Asgore said as the two of them walked along the rocky pathway, "the suicide rate is higher than it's been in years." Wingdings had no trouble at all believing that. Jobs were scarce, lots of areas were struggling with overcrowding, people were starting to lose hope that they'd ever see the the barrier between the Underground and the Surface broken, and a handful of other things no doubt contributed to that grisly statistic.

"I know it could be nothing," Asgore said, pointing up at the Core's rooftop. "It may just be my eyes playing tricks on me, for all I know. But in the back of my mind, I can't help but think it may be someone wanting to...wanting to end their life. And if it is, well...I'd at least like to try and help them. You know?"

Wingdings knew. He nodded sympathetically at the king.

After a few more seconds of walking, they reached the Core's entrance and went inside. A blast of cool air ruffled Wingdings's lab coat and tousled the king's thick white fur. Though the dramatic change in temperature was much appreciated, the building was still eerily quiet. The Core mainly ran itself, so the few employees that looked after its inner workings were off boondoggling somewhere, but it still felt wrong for a place so large and so important to look so empty.

Someone could walk right through the door, undetected. They could climb the stairs and go out on the rooftop, and there would be no one around to question what they were doing...

Maybe there really was a person up there.

"Which way to the roof?" Asgore asked. Wingdings pointed a long, bony finger to a spiral staircase near the end of the building. The two of them went over to it. Asgore looked at it, frowning. Wingdings thought he knew why, too, but without a comprehensible voice, he'd have to let Asgore fill up the silence.

"Uh, this is very embarrassing," Asgore said, "but I don't believe I'll, uh...I don't think I can fit, Doctor."

Precisely what Wingdings had been thinking, truth be known. The narrow staircase would be no trouble for the skeleton to navigate, since he was so lanky, but there was no way Asgore would be able to squeeze through. He felt a little foolish about it, since this whole thing wasn’t his idea to begin with, but he decided he’d go up by himself to check things out. He put his right hand to his chest and pointed upward with his left, indicating his intentions as best he could.

Asgore seemed to understand him well enough. “You don’t mind to go up there on your own?” he asked. Wingdings shook his head.

“Oh, I really appreciate it,” Asgore beamed. “I just worry about what could be up there, and…well, I’d hate it if someone didn’t look into it. Thank you, I mean that.”

With a slight smile and an incline of his head, Wingdings headed up the spiral staircase. Hopefully it’d pan out to be nothing, but there was no telling—maybe there really was some poor person up there, staring down into the magma, contemplating…

Though he kept telling himself it was most likely nothing, he climbed the stairs a little faster. He reached the door to the rooftop and went outside.

The heat hit him as soon as he opened the door, but he pushed his discomfort to the back of his mind. He scanned the rooftop for the thing he’d seen from afar.

It didn’t take long to find it. Something yellow was clinging to the rooftop’s inner railing, but he still couldn’t tell what it was. He walked toward it. When he was a few steps away, the thing swiveled around to look at him.

It was a flower.

With a face.

****

The flower had freed himself from his soil-prison by using his stalk, roots, and leaves to drag his strange little body up and out. It had taken days to escape that horrid laboratory and sneak outside. He had no idea where he was—he had no memories at all, actually—but he knew that staying in the laboratory would surely mean death.

That tall skeleton and his two lackeys were up to no good. His earliest memories that he could rake up from the back of his mind were of the yellow one pouring a cloudy blue liquid onto the soil he’d once been trapped in. That strange liquid, whatever it was, had tasted terrible. He knew it couldn’t be good for him. That was when he decided to escape.

He skulked around the laboratory, hiding in the shadows, trying to learn what he could about his current situation. His mind may have been devoid of any memories, but he wasn’t an idiot; it didn’t take a genius to realize who was in charge. The skeleton in the lab coat and the turtleneck sweater, the one with the funny voice he couldn’t understand, walked around with a definite air of authority. The tall skeleton was often seen with a shorter, wider skeleton with a stupid grin and a yellow lizard-creature with cat-eye glasses and bad posture. They seemed to understand the tall skeleton’s speech patterns. After extended periods of observation, it was clear to the flower that those two did whatever the tall skeleton wanted them to do. He was, without a doubt, the one in charge.

The tall skeleton was who he needed to kill, then.

Yes, the yellow one had poured sickening blue water into his soil, but the tall skeleton probably told her to do it. If not, he could’ve put a stop to it if he’d wanted to. He looked after everything else in the laboratory, so, as far as the flower was concerned, it was the tall skeleton’s fault he was what he was.

Once he got over the initial confusion of being birthed into the world, he became consumed with rage. Anger was all he knew. He was in the body of a flower, and that was not right. He should not be here. He should be somewhere else. Some _one_ else.  

He must kill, or he would be killed. Of that, he was absolutely certain.

But he would do things correctly. He would wait for the perfect opportunity to kill the head scientist. He didn’t know how or when, but he would do it. And he would enjoy it. Whether or not that would fix anything, he didn’t know, but he’d do it just the same.

He couldn’t take being trapped inside the laboratory anymore, but he couldn’t exactly waltz out the door, either. When everyone went home for the night, all the doors were locked tight. He knew because he’d tried them all. He had no choice but to slip out just as someone was exiting the building, scurrying under their lab coat and matching their footsteps. He was nearly trampled in the process, but he’d made it.

Free at last, he decided to head for the tallest building he could see. If nothing else, he could get a better look at his surroundings. Carefully, he picked his way across a rocky pathway, magma bubbling and broiling on either side of him. When he finally made it to the tall building, he waited a few moments to make sure no one watching him, then used his roots to climb up the side.

The rooftop was apparently made for walking on. There were railings around the perimeter of it, presumably to keep people from bailing off the edge and falling into the magma. There was a doorway off to the right side leading inside the building. What anybody would want to do up here was a mystery to the flower. It wasn’t much of a place for sightseeing.

There wasn’t much to look at except for magma, and lots of it. He could see the pathway he’d just crossed, the laboratory he’d escaped from, and a winding path beyond that. The place was pretty secluded. But everyone, including the tall skeleton, left the laboratory every night, so they must live somewhere close by. Perhaps he ought to sneak around and take that winding path he could see in the distance, just to see where it led…

Then again, there was no sense in getting in a hurry about things. Time was something the flower had an abundance of. He made up his mind to observe his surroundings for a moment. He climbed to the top rung of the railing, wrapped his roots securely around it, and waited.

The concept of time was hard for the flower to comprehend, but he knew it did not feel like much of it had passed when he spotted a figure in the distance, walking down the rocky pathway toward him. When the figure got a little closer, he noticed it was the tall skeleton, puffing at a cigarette. Interesting. What was he doing out here? Would he be coming into this building?

The tall skeleton got a stone’s throw away from the building and stopped walking. For a split second the flower thought about climbing down from the railing and hiding, but the tall skeleton gave no indication that he’d seen anything amiss. He didn’t even look up.

It seemed like the tall skeleton was just…standing there. The flower watched as he flicked his cigarette butt into the magma, reached into his pocket and got another one, lit it, and stuck it into the side of his mouth. He seemed to be…what was the word he was looking for…ruminating.

But what was this? There was someone else coming down the pathway now. As the figure got closer, the flower could make out white fur and purple robes.

Something stirred within the flower, something strange and deep and curiously familiar. He felt like he’d seen the person with white fur and purple robes before. Maybe, in the life he’d had before he became stuck in this flower, he had known that person.

From that far up, the flower couldn’t make out any fine details about the familiar-looking person, but he tried to memorize the person’s general shape. There may come a time when he’d get to investigate that matter a little further.

The man in the purple robes said something, which made the skeleton jump and turn around to look at him. Then the man in the purple robes laughed—the booming sound traveled all the way up to the roof—and the tall skeleton shook the other man’s hand. The two of them talked for a moment…and then the man in the purple robes looked up.

And stared right at the flower.

The man in the purple robes pointed at him. The tall skeleton turned around to look, too. For a split second, the flower thought he might be best to scramble away from the railing and hide someplace, but it was too late. He’d already been spotted. The best thing to do, probably, was to just stay very, very still.

Well, maybe not. The two of them were heading toward the building now, probably to have a closer look at what they’d seen from the ground. That was not good.

Or maybe…maybe it _was_ good.

He’d have to handle this situation carefully, but he could very easily use his roots—which seemed to be quite numerous and long, though he hadn’t had the opportunity to test their limits as of yet—to pick the skeleton up and throw him into the magma. Though he wasn’t sure, he imagined that would kill the skeleton.

Though, the other fellow in the purple robes might be a problem. He could get in the way. Not to mention the flower felt like he’d known the man from somewhere, and he’d hoped to expound upon that. That man could possibly hold a key piece of information in finding out what he was. It would be a shame if the flower had to kill him, too. Well, perhaps the flower could subdue him somehow, if it came to that. Hopefully, though, the man would just stay clear of him.

The door was opening. A skeletal hand emerged, followed by the rest of the scientist. The flower tried to mentally prepare himself for what he was about to do. _Calm_ , he thought. _Just be calm. He will come to you._

And the tall skeleton began to walk towards him.

****

“You,” the flower said.

Not only did the flower have a face, but it could talk, too. This was bad—very, very bad. Alphys and Sans had told Wingdings that the biggest flower, the first flower they’d ever planted, had gone missing, but he’d just assumed one of the lab assistants had stolen it for their own mysterious purposes. Never would he have guessed that the flower literally got up and walked out on its own. But there was no denying that the flower was very much alive. If King Asgore saw this abomination, he’d throw a fit.

It crossed his mind to grab the flower and pitch it into the magma before Asgore had a chance to see it, but even his gray moral code knew that was not the right thing to do. Whatever Alphys had done to the flower, he was indirectly responsible for it. She was his understudy, after all.

Well, King Asgore would be relieved to know it wasn’t someone trying to jump off the edge of the building, though. The king may not even realize it was one of his experiments, anyhow. There were stranger-looking creatures in the Underground than that flower, that was for sure. He’d take it back to the lab and deal with it later, when his company had departed. He reached his hand out to grab the flower’s stalk.

“Don’t you touch me,” the flower hissed, nipping at the air with his sharp, tiny teeth. Wingdings jerked his hand away.

“I know who you are,” the flower continued, voice coated with hatred. “You did this to me.”

Wingdings lifted his shoulders into an incomplete shrug and splayed his fingers wide, which was all he could do. The flower was right, in a roundabout way, but there was nothing to be done about it now. He supposed he could run some tests on it back at the lab to—

The flower’s roots extended from its stalk with frightening speed, encircling Wingdings’s ribcage and spinal column and pinning his arms to his side. Wingdings’s left eye flared to life with his lavender-colored magic, but he knew it wouldn’t do any good. He projected his magic through his hands, which were rendered immobile. His magic was useless here.

“You, and that other skeleton, and that lizard-thing,” the flower seethed, “you all do horrible, horrible things. But you’re the one responsible for it all.” The flower brought Wingdings closer to his face. He smiled sickeningly. “You know you have to die, don’t you?”

Wingdings struggled, but it was no use. He couldn’t budge an inch in the flower’s tight grip. The only things he could move were his legs, which he kicked about uselessly. There was nothing he could do. He was stuck.

The flower maneuvered Wingdings over the railing and dangled him above the magma. Wingdings forced himself to look down. There was nothing he could hitch his magic to, nothing to grab hold of, nothing to help him. He hi going to die.

He wondered if it would be painful, or if it would be instantaneous. And was this really all there was, just this one life, and then it was lights out? He found that hard to believe, but that was the general consensus. Humans had strong souls, so they could survive after death and become something else, but monsters turned to dust and that was that. Surely that wasn’t true. Surely…

Oh, he wasn’t ready to die. He had many wrongs that needed to be made right. But most of all, he still had Papyrus and Sans to look after.

Papyrus and Sans…if he died, they’d only have each other.

He couldn’t allow that.

But it seemed like he didn’t have much of a say in the matter.

“See you in hell,” the flower said, and retracted his roots from around Wingdings’s body. Wingdings began to fall.

His last thoughts as the magma engulfed him were of his two poor nephews, all alone in this cruel world.

And then there was nothing but darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually have a very good reason for why this chapter was so belated. I had the chapter finished--finished!!--but my computer started messing up really bad. The trackpad stopped working, then the keyboard, and then it crashed altogether. I had to ship it off to get some repairs done on it. I still don't have it back, actually, but I'm borrowing this little tablet PC-thing from my sister......anyway, to make a long story short, I had the chapter done, but I broke my computer and lost the file. I re-typed it on a loaned computer for your reading pleasure. Sorry about the delays, but I'm sure yall can understand.


	9. Discoveries

Sans rewound the security tape and played it again, bringing his face even closer to the video screen. The footage was grainy and in black-and-white, so it was hard to make heads or tails of anything on the tape, but there was no mistaking his Uncle Wingdings in the top-right corner of the video.

No matter how many times Sans watched it, he couldn’t make out what, exactly, had happened. Wingdings had been lifted into the air, that much was obvious—but how, or by what force, Sans didn’t know. Magic, probably. Wingdings’s arms appeared to be pinned to his sides, which would explain why the older skeleton hadn’t used magic of his own to defend himself. Then, whatever had been holding Wingdings up had let go, and he fell into the magma.

Even with the security footage’s low resolution, Sans could see the lava ripple as his uncle plunged into it, saw the steam rise up from the space where Wingdings had once been. One second he was there, and then the next second…he was gone.

_Gone_.

He laid his arms on the desk and buried his head into his hoodie sleeves. He needed to get this out of his system before he saw Papyrus, or he wouldn’t be able to tell his little brother what had happened. He allowed himself to shed a few silent tears. Then he swiped at his eyes with his hoodie sleeve and sniffed deeply.

He rewound the tape. Played it again. He still couldn’t see what had pushed his Uncle into the magma just outside of the Core, and he doubted he ever would. Videography was not his forte, to say the least. Maybe there was someone out there who could fiddle with the lighting, maybe sharpen the frames a little—

There was a soft knocking at the door. Only one other person was in the building, so Sans didn’t even bother to ask who it was. He got up from his chair and opened the door for Alphys.

Her shoulders were hunched and her hands fidgeted. She would not look at him. “Figure…figure anything out?” she mumbled.

“Nothing new,” Sans sighed. He flipped the light switch off. “I guess I’ll head home. Can’t put this off any longer.”

Alphys nodded sadly as she stepped back from the doorway. Sans came out of the room and shut the door behind him. “Sh-should I go with you? Would that be…?”

“Nah,” Sans said, giving her a wan smile. “I appreciate it, and all. But I think he’ll take it better if it’s just me.”

Alphys nodded again. “You’re probably right,” she said.

Sans started walking down the hallway and she followed. “I-if you need anything…I mean…if there’s anything at all that I-I can do…”

“I know,” Sans said. He threw his arm over her shoulder, gave her a gentle squeeze, then let her go. “I’ll call ya if I need anything.”

****

Papyrus pulled a tissue from the box between his legs and swiped under his eye sockets with it. Orange-tinted tears soaked the thin material. He balled it up and tossed it at the tiny mesh trash can across the room. He missed. The sodden tissue ball came to land in a pile with others like it.

“It doesn’t even feel real, does it, brother?” Papyrus said, sniffling. His fingers worried at the hem of his knitted sweater.

“No,” Sans agreed softly, shaking his head. “It doesn’t.” Sans had shed no tears of his own since he’d left the lab, but he felt an emptiness within him, so deep and gnawing that he wasn’t sure how he was still functioning. His uncle was dead.

First, their dad ran out on them—asshole. And when their mother…passed away…Uncle Wingdings had had no choice but to take Sans and Papyrus into his home. He’d juggled a job and college, all while raising two kids that had been dumped in his lap. He had a quick temper, and he could be really stern at times, and he…he wasn’t perfect, nobody was, but he did the best he could.

And now he was gone forever.

“Are we…how are we going to have a funeral?” Papyrus said, voice warbling. He patted his tears away with another tissue and threw it across the room with the others. “We don’t even have…his…there’s nothing left of him, Sans!”

“I know,” Sans said, struggling to keep his voice from cracking, biting at the curve of bone that served as his lower lip. “We’ll figure somethin’ out, Pap. We will.”

Papyrus opened his mouth to say something, paused, then shut it again. A few moments of silence passed. The next time Papyrus opened his mouth, he said what he’d meant to a moment ago:

“Sans?” he said.

Sans tried to smile, but he couldn’t quite do it. “Yeah, bro?”

“I…”

Papyrus tugged another tissue from the box, but he didn’t use it to dry his eyes. He began to pull at it, shredding it into ragged strips, letting the pieces fall into his lap. “Sans, I…it would make me feel better if…”

The younger skeleton paused. Took a breath. Continued.

“Please don’t go back to that lab,” he said. “You come home late, you have nightmares, you’re so worn out all the time, and…and with what’s happened to Uncle, I…” Papyrus let out a series of shoulder-shaking sobs. Through his tears, he managed, “You’re all—I have—left.”

Sans threw his arms around his brother’s trembling frame and squeezed him tight. “Don’t worry, Pap,” he said, blinking away the pale-blue tears that formed at the corners of his eye sockets. He would not cry. Not now. “I won’t go back there if you don’t want me to. I really won’t. Promise.”

“I know I’m being selfish, brother,” Papyrus sniffed. “I know it’s a lot to ask. But I can’t stand the thought of you going back to…to that lab. I’m so sorry, Sans, I just can’t bear it.”

“Hey, it’s fine,” Sans said, releasing his grip on his brother, giving Papyrus a reassuring pat on the arm. “It was…getting to be a little too much for me, anyway.” Images of the Amalgamates, writhing and pulsating and groaning, flashed through his head.

“You’re just saying that to make me feel better,” Papyrus sniffed.

Sans shook his head. “I think it’ll do me some good to get away from that place,” he murmured.

“I think it will, too,” Papyrus agreed.

They sat in silence for a moment, listening to the couple in the apartment next to theirs bickering over something or other. So stupid, Sans thought. Your life could be cut short at any given moment, snuffed out like a candle, and his two neighbors were wasting precious seconds of theirs arguing over whose turn it was to vacuum the living room.

“They sure do fight a lot,” Papyrus mumbled.

“That they do,” Sans said, reaching for the remote on the coffee table. “Howsabout we drown ‘em out with some TV?”

Papyrus agreed with an incline of his head. “That would be nice.”

****

The following morning, Sans was jolted awake by a crisp, chipper xylophone tune. It took his sleep-fogged mind a few seconds to realize that he was hearing his cell phone ringtone. He grabbed his phone from the bedside table and squinted at the illuminated screen. The incoming caller’s phone number wasn’t in his contact list, nor did he recognize it, but he answered it anyway.

“Hello?” he said groggily.

“Good morning to you, Sans,” the other person said. The voice was really familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it.

“This is King Asgore calling,” the voice continued. “I hope I haven’t woken you up.”

“No, you didn’t wake me up,” Sans lied.

“Ah, good,” Asgore said. “Well, I’m not one for telephone conversations, so I’ll make this brief. I’d like for you to stop by the castle at your earliest convenience. To, uh…well, to get your uncle’s affairs in order. It doesn’t have to be today, if you’re not feeling up to it. I would certainly understand.”

“No, that’s fine,” Sans said, trying unsuccessfully to shake the sleep from his voice. “I’ll take care of it today, that’s—that’s fine.” Sans groaned inwardly, rubbing at his forehead with his free hand. He wanted to stay in his bed for, say, a few more months. But he figured he may as well get it over and done with.

“Wonderful,” King Asgore said, but the usual cheeriness that coated his voice was gone. “I’ll let my people know you’re coming.”

They said their awkward goodbyes and Sans hung up the phone, sitting the device back on the bedside table. He burrowed under his bed covers and curled his arms around his pillow. It was barely even seven in the morning, which was still sleep-time for Sans. He’d allow himself another hour or two of shuteye before he started the day.

Just as he was drifting off to sleep, he heard two perfunctory knocks at his door, followed by said door opening.

“Sans?” Papyrus said.

Sans sat up in bed, looking at his brother with half-lidded eye sockets. “Yeah?”

“I…think I have some good news?” Papyrus said with uncertainty. “I just got a phone call from the king, of all people.”

“Really?” Sans said. “What’d he want?”

“He gave me a promotion,” Papyrus said. “He wants me to be a part of the Royal Sentry.”

As of yesterday, Papyrus had been a Royal Lookout, patrolling a few of the less-populated areas of Hotland. Being a Sentry would mean better pay, less grunt work, and more serious scouting missions.

Despite everything, Sans smiled. It was nice to have a little bit of good news. “No way,” he said.

“Yes way!” Papyrus said. “He said I could start whenever…” Suddenly, he frowned. “Well, whenever I felt up to it.”

“Hey, that’s great,,” Sans said, trying to glaze over his brother’s sudden change of mood. “One step closer to being in the Royal Guard, huh?”

“I hope so,” Papyrus nodded. “Part of me feels guilty for being happy about my new job, but I know that’s what Uncle would’ve wanted.” His smile returned. “He would want me to try and get back into the swing of things. Don’t you think so?”

Sans grinned. “Yeah,” he said. “He would’ve.”

“I’ll let you get back to your nap, brother,” Papyrus said, taking a step backward into the hallway. “I just wanted to share the good news.”

“Congrats, Pap.”

“Thank you,” Papyrus said warmly. “You have a nice rest.” He shut the door.

For a second, Sans thought about actually going back to sleep, but he decided against it. He didn’t quite know what getting Uncle Wingdings’s affairs in order would entail, but he assumed it would mean lots and lots of paperwork. There would be no use in prolonging it. He threw his bed covers aside, swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and got to his feet.

****

It had taken hours, but Sans and the Royal Secretary had finally gotten everything situated. Wingdings had not left a will, which didn’t surprise Sans in the slightest; setting up a will would mean venturing into the king’s castle, which he was never fond of doing. That meant that all Wingdings’s stuff—his “assets,” as the Royal Secretary had called them—fell to his closest, oldest next-of-kin, which was Sans.

Sans was surprised at the amount of gold Wingdings had in his bank account; he figured the majority of his uncle’s money was sunk into his pet projects (and those fancy cashmere sweaters he always wore), but apparently he’d been trying to save it up.

Another surprise was that Sans was now the deed-holder to Wingdings’s old Snowdin home. Sans and Papyrus had lived in that house with their uncle for the majority of their lives—that is, until Wingdings landed the Royal Scientist job. When that happened, they’d packed up and moved to an apartment complex in Hotland to be closer to the laboratory. Sans had never really given it much thought, but he’d always assumed the house had been sold.

While he was in the Royal Secretary’s office, he felt his cell phone buzz in his hoodie pocket. He gave it a glance to make sure it wasn’t Papyrus—it wasn’t, it was Alphys—and stuck it back in his pocket, making a mental note to call her when he got out of there.

He emerged from the stuffy office and shoved a pair of keys into his pocket—house keys for the home in Snowdin that was now his. They clattered against his cell phone, which made Sans remember that he needed to call Alphys back. He dialed her number and stuck the phone up to his ear-hole.

“Hey, I missed a call from you?”

“Yeah,” Alphys said on the other end of the line. “U-um, I…I was trying to…to clean out Doctor Gaster’s desk for you. So you wouldn’t have to do it. I hope you’re not mad, but…I found something you might want to see.”

Sans’s stomach lurched. There was no telling what “something he’d want to see” would entail, but he wasn’t entirely sure he was prepared to see it.

“Okay,” he said, and his own voice sounded a thousand miles away. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

****

The box was long and shallow, bearing a logo from the place Wingdings bought all his clothes from. Underneath that logo, written in permanent marker, were four strange symbols—a teardrop, a hand holding two fingers up in a V shape, a skull-and-crossbones, and another teardrop.

“I wasn’t sure, b-but…” Alphys said, handing Sans the box. “But there are four symbols here, and the first and last symbol are the same, so I figured that it stood for the same letter…does it say ‘Sans’?”

Sans smiled sadly, running his thumb over the black lettering. “Yeah,” he mumbled. He looked up at her. “This was in his desk?”

She nodded. “In the bottom drawer. Do you want…I-I mean, I can step out into the hall for a second…if you want to be alone when you open it.”

“Nah,” he said with a shake of his head. “It’s fine. I don’t care if you see what’s in here.” He sighed. “Welp. Might as well get it over with, huh?”

He took off the lid and slid it under the bottom of the box. Inside, he could see nothing but red tissue paper. He pulled it out of the box and let it flutter to the floor, until he came to a single, small object nestled in the crinkled paper:

A key.

Sans tossed the box onto his desk and turned the key over in his hands. Attached to the key was a keychain, a metal smiley-face grinning up at him. He turned the keychain to its reverse side. Written on it, in Wingdings’s symbolic handwriting, were two numbers.

“One, two,” Sans muttered. “Or maybe it’s a twelve, I dunno.” He held the key up for Alphys to see.

“Looks like a key to one of the break room lockers,” she said. At that, she reached into her lab coat pocket and pulled out her lanyard. She picked through her ring of keys until she came to one identical to the one Sans was holding. “Yeah, that’s where—that’s where it must go to.”

Sans probably would’ve recognized the key, had he ever bothered to rent out a break room locker, but he made do with cramming everything into his desk drawers. He closed his hand around the key.

“Guess we better go see what’s inside,” he said, heading out the room. Alphys hesitated, then trotted along behind him.

****

“Here goes nothin,” Sans breathed. His hands shook as he slid the key into locker 12’s lock. He turned the key and the tiny door popped open, revealing—

“What is it?” Alphys said, leaning over Sans’s shoulder to peer inside.

“It’s…a box of jawbreakers?” Sans said, taking the small candy box out of the locker. Well, jawbreakers always were Unc’s favorite. Maybe he just wanted something for Sans to remember him by.

The left flap of the candy box had already been torn open. Sans thumbed it the rest of the way open and shook the contents of the box into his hand.

There was no candy left inside.

A keycard fell into his bony palm.

“Another…?” Alphys muttered.

“That’s Unc for ya,” Sans said, a bittersweet smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. “Always making stuff overly complicated.”

And, for a fleeting moment, it felt like Wingdings hadn’t really died, he’d simply…left for awhile. Sans expected to turn around and see him standing in the break room doorway, grinning that stupid half-smirk of his, taking silent delight in sending his two understudies on a wild goose chase around the lab.

But Sans had seen it himself. The grainy security footage of his uncle being thrown into the magma was still raw and fresh in his mind. He knew his uncle was dead. And he wouldn’t be coming back.

“Wonder what it opens?” Alphys said, snapping Sans out of his rumination. “W-well, at least you know it’s something in this building.” She shrugged.

“True…” Sans said. He turned the card over in his hands. Nothing on it to indicate what door it went to. On a hunch, he held the candy box up to his eye socket and peered inside.

“There it is,” Sans muttered.

“You found something?”

Sans handed her the box. Just as Sans had done, Alphys lifted it up to her eye and looked into it. On the inner cardboard was more of Wingdings’s strange handwriting, written in what looked like ballpoint pen.

“How did he even _write_ that?” Alphys wondered, furrowing her brow.

“Who knows,” Sans said, and that time, he did allow himself to smile. He could just imagine Wingdings using some crazy invention of his to cut the box open, allowing him to write freely on the inside, then using some other contraption to seal the box back together so it looked like he’d never taken it apart in the first place. All so that he could garner a reaction from people, just like the one Alphys had just done.

Sans held his hand out for Alphys to hand the box back over, which she did. He tore it open to read Wingdings’s message more clearly.

“What’s it say?” Alphys asked.

“‘Left wing twenty-eight,’” Sans read aloud. “Well, that’s pretty straightforward.”

“The left wing of the lab, in room twenty-eight, I-I would think,” Alphys said with another shrug.

“That almost seems too easy, doesn’t it,” Sans said, raising a browbone. “Let’s check it out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you read my little update at the end of the last chapter I posted, I mentioned something about my computer being in the shop. Well, I finally got it back, so this update was a lot more timely than the last one! Also, a part of me hates to leave a chapter on a cliffhanger, but the chapter was getting to be a little long...heh. 
> 
> Oh!! I nearly forgot!! I drew a piece of fanart...for my own fanfiction...that's kinda lame, but I wanted to draw what I think Doctor Gaster looked like before he fell into the Core. Here's a link if you want to see it: http://cornpony.tumblr.com/post/136351507309/i-think-ill-call-this-before-the-accident-or


	10. The Room

It was evident by the stained marble flooring and dusty wall paneling that the left wing of the lab was scarcely used—if it was used at all.  Before today, Sans had known about it, but he’d had no reason to go down there, so he simply hadn’t.  By the looks of things, nobody else did, either.

Nobody except Uncle Wingdings, anyway.

“This place could use a good cleaning,” Alphys remarked, following close at Sans’s heels.

“Guess Unc told the cleaning crew to stay outta here,” Sans said.  Thinking back on it, the hallway where his uncle once kept his various supplies—the place where the golden flower experiments took place—had been pretty dirty, too.  But not like this.  This place looked like something messy had been moved through it.

There were doors to their left and right, going all the way down the hall.  Next to each door was a placard, the room title etched into its metal surface.  Sans and Alphys passed L22, L23, L24…

And as they walked closer to the 28th room, the room which would, hopefully, unlock once Sans used the mysterious keycard on it, Sans felt his heart racing in his chest cavity.  Who knew what would be behind that door?  It could be totally empty, it could have another clue inside telling Sans to go to yet another part of the lab, it could have a hideous failed experiment locked up in chains, it could be…well, anything.  When it came to things like this, Wingdings Gaster was pretty unpredictable.

“Here it is,” Sans said with uncertainty as he stopped in front of the door labeled “L28.”  Under normal circumstances, Sans would be all about wasting time, but in this sort of situation, he’d much rather bite the bullet and get it over with.  Without preamble, he stuck the keycard into the door’s card reader.  

A green light blinked on the card reader and the lock unbolted with an audible click.  Sans put his hand on the door handle and looked over his shoulder at Alphys.  Her face was scrunched into a look of apprehension.

“You can wait outside, if you wanna,” Sans said, forcing a half-smile.  “I can go in by myself.”

Alphys pushed her cat-eye glasses further up the bridge of her nose and stood up straighter.  “N-no, I’m fine,” she assured him, though the fear in her voice deceived her.  “I’ll go in.  You m-might need my help in there, anyway.  You never know.”

“Okay,” Sans nodded, then turned his attention back to the door.  He turned the handle and pushed the door open.

Not surprisingly, it was pitch dark inside, and the dim hallway lighting did little to change that.  Sans ran his hands along the wall until he found the switch.  He flipped it.

He looked inside the room, and what he saw made him suck in a sharp breath.  

Alphys looked like she couldn’t decide whether to be frightened or confused.  She looked over at her colleague. 

“What…what _are_ those?” she asked him.

Polished metal skulls were stacked neatly against the back wall, smiling indifferently at the two monsters.  Though they weren’t all visible, Sans estimated there had to be at least twelve of them.

“They’re…” Sans started, but he hesitated.  Unc had wanted to keep these things a secret, hadn’t he?  For a second, Sans thought about making up some kind of story, but he figured it was too late for that now.

“They’re weapons,” Sans told her.  “Unc made ‘em, but you probably already guessed that part.”

“What would he need weapons for?” Alphys said.  “Was he trying to break down the Barrier with these things?”

“I think that was gonna be his intention, after he worked the bugs out,” Sans nodded.  “They turn Determination into geothermal energy—or, at least, his prototype did.  I dunno about these guys.”

Alphys stared at the strange weapons, the thoughts turning in her mind.  “That certainly explains why my Determination samples were coming up missing,” she said.  

“I think he wanted to keep these things a secret,” Sans blurted, “which is why he, uh… _borrowed_ the Determination from you.”

A small smile crept to Alphys’s face.  “Probably didn’t want to get me involved, in case things went awry,” she said.  

Suddenly, Alphys’s eyes widened.  She walked over to the stack of blasters and reached out her hand.  Attached to one of the skulls with a piece of scotch tape was a tiny, folded-up piece of paper.  She pulled the note off and handed it to Sans.

“Here.  I-I’m sure it’s for you.”

Wordlessly, Sans opened up the note, which had been folded as small as possible, for whatever reason.  He decided to read it to himself before he read it aloud to Alphys, in case it contained something private.  In Doctor Gaster’s tiny, cramped handwriting, it read:

_Dear Sans,_

_If you are reading this letter, there is a high probability that I am dead.  Either that, or you were going through the things in my desk without my permission and happened upon the box with your name on it.  If it’s the latter, I hope you know that touching other people’s things without asking is very rude._

_In this room are all fourteen of my Gaster Blasters.  You may have noticed that they look a tad different from the first one I showed you.  That is because these Blasters are new-and-improved versions of the prototype.  They are quite a bit more powerful than the one you have used before, so I implore you to be careful with them.  I’m leaving them to you because I fear you will need them in the near future.  I hope I’m wrong about that, but you know how often I’m wrong about things.  (Not very often.)_

_If I really am dead, I’m sure Papyrus has already talked you out of ever coming back to work at the lab.  That is probably for the best.  I would like to see Alphys find employment elsewhere, also, but you and I both know she’s too attached to the lab to ever do that.  Please tell her to be very careful.  Also, she can have all of the tools on my work desk if she can find anything useful._

_It is very, very important that you learn how to operate these Gaster Blasters with ease.  I know that the control of your magic has been a lifelong struggle for you, so take your time with it, but you NEED to learn to control them.  I cannot stress this enough.  Once you get the hang of it, you can wield more than one at a time.  Channeling your magic into all fourteen is possible, but very, very hard.  Hopefully you’ll never have to do that._

_Remember: practice your magic, but don’t overdo it, and stay alert of your surroundings._

_-W.D. Gaster_

_P.S.—Take good care of your brother for me._

Sans took a moment to compose himself, then read read the letter aloud to Alphys.  His voice didn’t warble even once, which he was thankful for.  When he finished reading it, he folded it back up and stuck it into his jacket pocket for safekeeping.

“He…he made it sound like something bad’s gonna happen, didn’t he?” Alphys said quietly, her eyes downcast.

“Definitely,” Sans said.  “But I don’t know what.”

“Must be something pretty bad for you to need—for you to need fourteen of these things.”

“I know,” Sans said.  “He really wants me to learn how to use them, but my magic’s so bad, that could take years.”

“On your own, it might,” Alphys said.  “Maybe you just need a t-tutor.  To help you with your magic, y’know?”

“Ehh,” Sans hummed, “yeah, I might.  It’s just that my magic’s pretty…unpredictable.  I’d hate to hurt somebody.”

“M-maybe King Asgore knows somebody on the Royal Guard who can help you.  Someone with lots and lots of armor.”

“That ain’t such a bad idea,” Sans said with a nod.  He walked over to the stack of Gaster Blasters and ran his bony hand along its smooth, metallic snout.  “If Unc went through all this trouble to hide these guys, then…then I better heed his warning, huh?”

Alphys nodded.  “I-I think I would.  By the way, u-um…are you really quitting?”

Sans’s shoulders sagged.  He’d been dreading telling Alphys about it, but Wingdings had pretty much done it for him.  “Yeah,” he admitted.  “Papyrus doesn’t want me to come back here—I’m kinda breaking that promise right now, come to think of it.  Just, y’know, everything that’s happened here lately, it’s been taking a toll on me, and Pap’s been noticing it.  And after what happened to Unc…I can’t say I blame him for not wanting his big bro to come back here.”

“B-but…won’t you miss it?”

“I’ll never stop science-ing,” Sans half-grinned.  “But as for doing it for a living…”  He sighed deeply.  “I dunno.  I, uh, haven’t really given it a lot of thought.  But I won’t be coming back to work in _this_ lab.  Sorry, Alphys, I really am.”

She started blinking rapidly, and Sans could tell she was trying not to cry.  He felt absolutely horrible.

“I don’t think I can handle a-all this alone,” she said.  “The amalgamates, the Barrier, I—I-I don’t know what I’m going to do, I—if you leave, too—“

A single tear ran down from each eye.  She wiped them away with the sleeve of her lab coat.  “I don’t mean to cry, I just…this is a lot.  I mean, I’m trying not to make this a-all about me, I just…well.  There’s a lot of stuff to look after in the lab.  I don’t know if I can do it by m-myself.  And I’m just…freaking out a little bit, that’s all.”  She wiped another tear away from her eye with her coat sleeve.  “I’m sorry.”

Sans was feeling extra horrible now.  He’d agreed to never come back to the lab for his brother’s sake, and he never once thought about how Alphys would feel about that.  With his uncle gone, too, that dropped so many responsibilities into her lap, all at once.  King Asgore would probably hire a new head scientist within time, and maybe a new assistant to replace Sans, too, but there was no telling how long that would take.  Until then, Alphys would be all alone.

All alone with those amalgamates.

Maybe Sans shouldn’t have—no.  He made a promise to his brother, and that was that.  There was no going back on it now.  

He had the brief urge to give Alphys a hug, but he knew that if he did that, she’d really start crying.  He left her alone.  

“Sorry,” he said uselessly.  

“No,” Alphys said with a sniff, “I understand.  I totally, totally understand.  Papyrus is right.  This lab…maybe you really shouldn’t come back.  For your brother’s sake, a-and for your own sake.  It’ll be…it’ll be weird for me, doing all this work by myself, b-but I’m sure I’ll manage it just fine.”

They left the small room and made sure the door was locked, then made their way back into the main part of the lab.  Alphys stopped in the doorway of the lab office they used to share, her hand on the door handle.

“Y-you think Doctor Gaster was serious about…about his tools?  On his work desk?”

“I’m sure he was,” Sans said.  _He’s not gonna be using them anymore_ , he thought grimly, then banished the thought from his mind.  He gave Alphys a slight nod.  “Yeah.”

She turned the door handle, paused, then let go of it.  She looked back at Sans.  “So I guess you’re leaving, huh?”

“Yeah,” Sans said.  “Think I’m gonna go ahead and take off…I’ve got a lot I wanna talk to Papyrus about.  Need to tie a bow on a few things, so to speak.”

“Is there anything in here you wanted to keep?  T-take with you?”

“Nah,” Sans shrugged.  “Not really.  I can come back later this week and help you clean it out—“

“It’s fine,” Alphys assured him.  “I’ll do it.”

A moment of awkward silence.  Alphys stared at Sans.  Sans stared back at her.  He opened his mouth to say he’d be leaving, but Alphys had flung her arms around him and he found his head buried into the crook of her neck.

She hugged him tight.  Aw, hell.  He hugged her back.  He’d wanted to avoid this mushy-gushy stuff, but he supposed it was inevitable.

“I-it’s gonna be awhile before I see you again, huh?” she said.

“I dunno,” Sans said honestly.

“Can we still hang out and stuff?”

Sans pulled himself out of her arms.  He smiled up at her.  “Definitely.  It’s not like I _hate_ you, or anything.  You’re still my friend.  I’m just quitting.”  He added, quickly:  “And also probably moving.”

Her jaw dropped.  “You’re _moving_?”

“Well, I’m gonna talk to Pap about it,” he said, “but Unc left me the deed to our old house, back in Snowdin.  I kinda hate this hot weather, and Papyrus got a promotion, anyway, so—“

“W-when did Papyrus get a _promotion_?”

“Didn’t I mention that?” Sans asked her.  “I guess I didn’t.”

Alphys’s face looked like Sans had just mortally wounded her.  “Now I’m _really_ not ever gonna see you,” she frowned.

“I’ll come visit,” Sans told her.  “And you love it in Snowdin, too, I know ya do.  You can come visit any time.”  He quirked his browbones.  “And you can bring those Gaster Blasters when you come, too,” he joked.

That last bit of his sentence made her smile, if only slightly.  “Okay.  Okay, y-yeah.  Maybe this won’t…be so bad.”

Sans reached out and gave her a little pat on the arm.  “It’ll be fine.  It has to be, right?”

He hadn’t meant to be so cryptic when he said that, but it sure came out that way.  Alphys gave him a weird look for a split second before she replaced it with an awkward grin.  

“I’ll text you,” she said, opening up the door to the lab room.

Sans took a step toward the exit.  “I’ll keep in touch.”

Alphys waved her clawed hand at him.  “Bye…”

“See ya.”

Sans exited the lab and stood in the doorway for a moment.  He hadn’t made it official yet, but he had just quit his job.  It was a very strange feeling.  

No more unethical experiments.  No more subjecting live monster patients to questionable treatments.  No more soul-capturing, no more amalgamates, no more _nothing_.

But he knew his freedom had come at a terrible price.


	11. Training

“Nice one!”

Papyrus couldn’t believe he was actually having a training session with the head of the Royal Guard, nevertheless that he was actually impressing her with his skills.  He’d successfully deflected another of her magical attacks, a blue-green shot of energy in the shape of a spear, with his own magical weapon.  

He’d never had to fight like this, so the only weapon he could conjure on such short notice was an elongated bone that looked suspiciously like his own femur.  It looked a little silly, but it seemed to be working out just fine.

“Thank you!” he shouted to the head of the Royal Guard.  He stood with his knees slightly bent and his bone weapon held aloft in his right hand, ready for whatever she decided to throw at him next.

But she was walking toward him now, casually, her hands jammed into the pockets of her sweatpants.  As she drew closer, Papyrus could see that her face, chest, and upper arms were drenched in sweat.  Papyrus had the tendency to perspire with orange-tinted sweat; he wondered what his own face looked like.

“I think that’s enough practice for today,” she breathed.  Papyrus allowed his weapon to fade away, the magical energy flowing back into him.  

“Now that your initiation’s out of the way, we can introduce ourselves.”  She extended her hand to him.  “I’m Undyne.”

Papyrus grabbed her proffered hand.  “Nice to meet you, I’m PapWUHAAAAAAHHH!”

As soon as he’d grabbed onto Undyne’s hand, she yanked him forward, used her free arm as a fulcrum, and vaulted him up and over her shoulder.  He flew through the air for one frightening second, then crash-landed into a heap of snow, his limbs sprawled rather unattractively.  

“Ow…”

Undyne loomed over him, a face-splitting grin plastered onto her face.  Her teeth were jagged and golden.  

“Rule number one,” she said, “always keep your guard up.”  She held her hand down for Papyrus to grab onto, but he did not grab it.

“I’ll help myself up, thank you,” he said, struggling to his feet on his own.

Undyne nodded in approval, the grin never leaving her face.  “Very smart,” she noted.

Papyrus shook the snow from his sweater.  He found himself smiling, too.  “I’m Papyrus, by the way.”

“Good t’meetcha, Papyrus,” Undyne said.  “I think we’re gonna get along just fine.  C’mon, we’ll start your real training.”

She took off walking at a good clip.  Papyrus stood there for a second, mildly shocked, then sped up to her.

“That wasn’t my _real_ training?” Papyrus said incredulously.  “Then what was it?”

“A test,” Undyne said.  She reached up to her head and tugged the elastic band away from her ponytail.  She smoothed down her flyaway hairs, then re-tied it.  It was lopsided now, but Papyrus thought it best not to mention it.  

“A test?”

“That’s right,” she said.  “And I’m proud to say that you passed.

“I did?” Papyrus beamed.  “That’s wonderful!  Especially considering I had no idea you were testing me.”

“People tend to do better if they don’t know their performance is being evaluated,” Undyne said.  “Anyway, let’s head down to one of the sentry posts.  I’ll show you the ropes.”

****

It had been so long since Papyrus had set foot in these woods.  Waves of nostalgia were hitting him like a ton of bricks.  It was strange, how he had gotten older—taller—but the trees and shrubs were still in the same place they always were, unchanging and undisturbed.  It was comforting, somehow.  

He kicked happily through the snow with the toes of his boots.  “My brother and I used to play in these woods all the time when we were kids,” he told Undyne.  

Undyne rubbed at her arms to try and generate some warmth.  Her teeth were chattering.  Papyrus had offered her his sweater (he had a shirt on underneath, he promised, it’d be fine), but she’d declined it.

“Why, Undyne, you’re so cold, your skin’s turning blue,” Papyrus smiled.  “That’s a joke.  Your skin is already blue.”

“Why was it so much warmer a few minutes ago?” she huffed.  

“We were fighting to the death a few minutes ago, remember?  We were working up quite a sweat.”

She inclined her eyebrows.  “Oh, yeah.”

They made their way to the first sentry post.  There was a door on the side, but it was only to make getting into it easier; the large open area at the front of the structure made it impossible to keep people out.  Papyrus didn’t figure that would be much of an issue, though.

The floorboards groaned under the weight of their feet.  Papyrus decided it best to tread more cautiously, but Undyne kept walking on it at her regular pace.  

“They always do that,” she assured him.  “This ol’ girl’s still standing strong.  Hasn’t fallen apart on me yet.”  

There were three plush chairs inside the sentry station, weather-beaten and worn from extended use.  Undone took a seat in one of them.  Papyrus sat beside her.  A metal spring dug into one of his ribs, and he was pretty sure some kind of insect had just crawled across his leg, but he ignored all of this.

“Come to think of it,” Papyrus said, “this place wasn’t here when I was little.  It can’t be that old.”

“Really?”

“I think I’d remember all these sentry stations around here.  They must’ve been put up pretty recently.”

Undyne narrowed her eyes in thought.  “And they’re already in this bad of shape?  Geez, Louise, the maintenance on these things must be more horrible than I thought.”

Undyne went over the basic duties of being a Royal Sentry, which she said was mostly patrolling the roads for anything suspicious.  Up the road a little ways was a large door that led into the Ruins.  Not many people lived there, but some monsters still called it home.  If a monster happened to open the door and pass through, that was perfectly fine, of course, but—

“But if you ever see a human,” Undyne said gravely, “or anything that even kinda _looks_ like a human, you gotta tell me _immediately_.”

“A human?” Papyrus questioned.  He couldn’t keep the excitement from his voice as a smile spread across his face.  “I’ve never seen a human before.”

“This is serious,” Undyne said.  “If a human ever passes through, we have to capture it.  Humans are very dangerous.”

“Right,” Papyrus nodded.  “Patrol the area and capture any humans.  I can do that.”

“Easy-peasy,” Undyne said with a crooked smile.  

As quickly as her grin had come, however, it faded away.  “I, uh…heard about your uncle,” she said solemnly.  “Sorry for your loss.”

A few days after Uncle Wingdings died, all anyone had to do was say his name and Papyrus melted into a sniffling, bawling mess.  Over the past week, however, he’d learned to keep his composure.  “Thank you,” he said.  “I appreciate that.”

And in that moment, Papyrus somehow knew that he and Undyne would grow to be great pals.

****

It never felt strange to be back in his old house, even though Sans hadn’t lived there in five years.  To him, it felt like seeing an old friend.  The creaks he heard when he stepped on certain floorboards, the strange musty smell in the kitchen pantry, the ambiguous stain on the living room rug—all of these things were so familiar, so welcoming.  He hadn’t realized how much he hated living in a cramped apartment until he moved back to Snowdin.

He still couldn’t motivate himself to set foot inside Uncle Wingdings’s workshop out back, but he figured that was normal for someone who recently experienced a loss.  Something told him that there might be another surprise for him in store out there, something Wingdings had left there for him to discover—that would be very much like his uncle to do that, after all—and he wasn’t so sure if he was ready to see it just yet. 

Every time he approached the workshop door, he could never force his hands to unlock it.  For now, the key was stashed in the bottom of his sock drawer.

Papyrus seemed to be adjusting to things pretty well, though.  Sans still heard his brother sobbing quietly in his bedroom from time to time, but on the whole, he was back to his normal, chipper self.

Papyrus’s new job as Royal Sentry was a huge help.  He’d made fast friends with his boss, Undyne, and the two of them hung out outside of work all the time.

As a matter of fact, she was at their house that very moment, sprawled on their couch, making short work of a slice of pizza with those sharp teeth of hers.  Papyrus sat beside her, a bowl of popcorn between his knees.  Sans was banished to the floor, where he lay on the rug and stared up at the ceiling.

The two of them were watching some TV show starring that ghost-turned-robot guy, Mettaton.  Mettaton had only been on TV for about a week now, but his brother was already obsessed with him.  Then again, he’d always been crazy about robots.

“Mettaton is so talented,” Papyrus said.  “I wonder if there’s anything he _can’t_ do.”

As the robot’s metallic voice warbled and crooned through the TV speakers, Undyne winced.  “Well, he can’t sing, that’s for sure.”

Papyrus’s jaw dropped.  “You don’t think he has a _wonderful_ singing voice?”

Undyne bit back a smile.  “Definitely not the word I’d use to describe it.”

Mettaton finished his song with an elaborate bow of his rectangular frame.  A pre-recorded applause track played.  

“And now, a word from our sponsors,” Mettaton said.  “Stay tuned for _Cooking with Mettaton_ , up next.  You wouldn’t want to miss it, would you, darlings?”

Papyrus smiled so wide, Sans was worried his brother’s skull might snap in two.  “Did you hear that?  Mettaton has a cooking show now!”

“Well, if his cooking’s as good as his singing, we’re in for a real treat, aren’t we?” Undyne grinned.

“I know!” Papyrus exclaimed.  “I can’t wait!”

Sans had been waiting for this sort of opportunity the entire night.  He had to step in quickly, so to speak, or the moment would be lost.

“Hey, speaking of talented robots,” Sans said from his spot on the rug, “how ‘bout you run up and get your robot action figure collection?  I bet Undyne’s Un- _dyin’_ to see ‘em.”

“A horrendous pun, brother, but a great idea.”  He stood up, sat his popcorn on the coffee table, and rushed up the stairs to his bedroom.  

“I’ll be back in just a second!” he called over his shoulder.

As soon they heard Papyrus’s door close behind him, both of them sat up and looked at each other.

“You know I kinda _don’t_ wanna see his robot dolls, don’t you?” she murmured.

“I know,” Sans said, getting up from the rug and having a seat beside her on the couch.  “I need to talk to you.”

Undyne nodded her head in understanding.

“Look,” Sans said.  “I don’t have time to explain it all right now, but I need your help.”

Her brow furrowed.  “Whassa matter?”

“Well,” Sans said, “I…to make a long story short, I need you to teach me how to control my magic.  I’ve seen you train with Papyrus.  You’re good.  And if..if something goes wrong, I know you’ll be able to handle yourself.”

She tilted her head at him.  “You can’t control your magic?”

“No,” he admitted, shaking his head.  “And I _need_ to learn, and fast.  I—“

The sound of Papyrus’s door opening floated down to Sans’s ear holes.  He scrambled from the couch and resumed his position on the rug just as Papyrus re-entered the living room, a cardboard box cradled in his arms.

“I think you’ll be impressed with my collection, Undyne,” Papyrus said, having a seat on the couch and sitting the box in front of him.  “Let me show you my favorite—"

“Oh, look, Mettaton’s back on!” Undyne hollered.  “Guess you’ll have to show me on commercial break!”

Papyrus clapped his hands together, his action figures temporarily forgotten.  “I can’t wait for this!” he said, staring eagerly at the television set.

****

“Thanks for the pizza, Pap,” Undyne said as she stood in the doorway.  Snowflakes drifted on the wind and tangled into her hair.  She pulled her scarf up to her chin.  “And, uh, for all those fun facts about robots, too.”

“You’re very welcome,” Papyrus grinned.  “And I hope you have an excellent weekend.”

“You, too, bud,” she grinned, showing off her jagged gold teeth.  She gave him a thumbs-up.  “See ya Monday.”

She turned to leave, but Sans peeked his head out from behind his brother and caught her eye.  She gave him a small, almost nonexistent nod.

“Hey, Sans,” she said as casually as she could.  “Would you do me a solid and walk me to the edge of town?  I’m, uh…”  She pursed her lips together, trying to think of an excuse.  “Scared of the dark.”

“Oh, Undyne, I had no idea you were afraid of the dark!” Papyrus said.  “I wouldn’t have kept you out so late if I’d have known!  Let me to walk you home.  It’s the least I can do.”

“Well, but the thing is,” she said, thinking quickly, “I think if Sans walked me home, it’d be a great time for us to get to know each other a little better.  Me and you see each other all the time, y’know?  This’d give me a chance to talk to your brother for awhile.”

Papyrus paused, seeming to consider this.  “Well, I _would_ love it if you and Sans could be friends, too,” he said.  He looked back at Sans.  “Brother, would you mind to—“

“Yeah,” Sans said quickly.  “Yeah, no problem, Undyne.  Need to stretch my legs, anyways.”

The two of them set off for the edge of town.  “Be careful!” Papyrus called after them.  They both gave him a little wave and watched him disappear into the house.

“Now,” Undyne said to Sans as they resumed walking.  “Tell me why you’re so desperate to control your magic all of a sudden.”

Sans hesitated, unsure if he should divulge this kind of information, but he felt like he could trust Undyne.  So he told her.

He explained the situation with the lab, with his uncle’s fourteen Gaster Blasters, the note Wingdings had written for him.  He left out the parts about the Amalgamates, though.  The less people knew about those things, the better.

“Sounds like he thought something bad was gonna happen,” Undyne said, her boots kicking though the shallow snow.  “What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” Sans admitted.  “I wish he would’ve just _told_ me.  But that would’ve been too easy, I guess…”  

A very sudden, very vivid vision of Uncle Wingdings barged to the forefront of his mind.  

_They were sitting at the kitchen table in their Snowdin home.  Sans was eight years old and struggling with mathematics, so Wingdings was helping him with his homework._

_“Eight times seven,” Wingdings said.  “Exactly as it sounds.  It’s eight, seven times.”  He reached his hand into a box of small screws and made seven piles of them on the table, each pile containing eight screws.  “You see?”_

_Sans frowned.  “So I gotta count all those?” he said.  His pencil was poised above his homework paper.  “Can’tcha just tell me the answer, Unc?”_

_Wingdings smiled warmly.  “I could,” he said, “but I won’t.  You’ll never learn anything that way, dear nephew.”_

_“It’s not like I’m ever gonna use this in real life, anyway,” Sans grumbled._

_“Nonsense,” Wingdings said.  “I use math several times a day.  It’s a very useful thing to learn.”_

_“Yeah, but you’re a scientist.”_

_“Someday you may be a scientist, too.”_

_Sans stared down at his homework paper, where the only thing he’d written was his name at the top and the current date._

_“I’m not smart enough to be a scientist.”_

_Wingdings allowed himself a little laugh.  “You’re very smart for your age, Sans,” he said.  “If you’re having a bit of trouble in math, well, that’s nothing a little studying won’t fix.  If you want to be a scientist when you grow up, then that’s what you’ll be.  You’d be great at it.”  Wingdings tapped his own skull with a bony finger.  “We uncles know these things.”_

_Sans’s eyes widened.  “You really think I could be a scientist when I grow up, Unc?  Or are you just saying that ‘cause we’re family and you have to?”_

_“You know I wouldn’t pull your leg like that,” Wingdings said with a shake of his head.  “You’re very intelligent.  Your mother—“  He faltered, but pressed on.  “Your mother struggled with math, too, when she was around your age.”_

_“Really?”_

_“Yes.  And she studied very hard until she got better at it.  I know you can do the same.”_

_Sans stared down at the pile of screws Wingdings had laid out for him, counting them in his head._

_“Fifty-six?”_

_“See?” Wingdings said, giving his nephew a jovial clap on the shoulder.  “That’s not so hard, is it?  Eight times seven is fifty-six.  Say that enough times and you’ll memorize it.  Then you won’t have to count screws.”_

_Sans wrote the answer to the first math problem down on his paper.  He grinned broadly.  “Thanks, Unc.  I think I got it from here, if I can borrow your box of screws for awhile.”_

_“Of course you—“  Wingdings said, but his voice was cut off by the sound of a dull thunk followed by a shrill wail coming from the living room._

_He stood up.  “Wonder what Papyrus has gotten into this time?” Wingdings murmured.  “Yell at me if you get stuck,” he told Sans as he stood up from the table._

_Sans nodded.  “I will.”_

_He watched as his uncle ran into the living room to comfort his little brother, black boots clacking on the wood floor, matching black lab coat billowing in his wake._

_Unc said he was smart enough to be a scientist, huh?  Maybe he’d do just that._

Sans tried his best to clear the scene from his mind.  Now was not the time to be thinking about stuff like that.  It may have been a good memory, but the feeling in his chest that accompanied it was anything but.

“But he was _really_ clear about me needing to practice my magic, get it under control,” Sans went on.  “I gotta be able to make those Gaster Blasters work for me.  I don’t know what he wanted me to use ‘em for, but I gotta learn how.”

They walked in silence for a few moments, and Sans assumed that Undyne was thinking things over.

“I don’t know how good of a teacher I’d be,” she said.  “But I’ll try to help you out.”

Sans’s shoulders slumped in relief.  “Thanks,” he said, “thanks a million.  I owe you one, big time.”

“You know where the garbage dump is?  At Waterfall?”

“Yeah?”

“Meet me there tomorrow morning.  Five a.m. sharp.”

Five a.m. was obscenely early, but he wouldn’t dare complain about it.  He’d take what he could get.  He’d force himself to wake up and meet her there.

“Okay,” Sans said.  “I’ll be there.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my head, Sans is the older brother (I think that's canon now, anyways), and he and Papyrus are six years apart in age. In that flashback scene I wrote, I mentioned that Sans was eight years old, so that would make little Pap just two. In case you were curious. Haha.
> 
> Also, I don't think I'll be writing her into this fic, but I've always thought a good name for Sans and Papyrus's mother would be Arial. (And they gotta have a cousin named Jokerman, right? A great-uncle named Helvetica? A distant relative named Curlz? The possibilities are endless.)

**Author's Note:**

> I had to take some...artistic liberties with this. I realized it would be a giant pain for Sans to have to translate every time Gaster spoke, but I didn't want to give up the mysterious allure of not being able to understand what the hell he's saying/writing, so I had Alphys invent herself a lil translator (as opposed to having Gaster speak/write in plain English). That's...kinda lame, honestly, but I think it reads more smoothly if she can understand him without Sans being an interpreter. 
> 
> I'm not sure how long this fic will be, since I've only got one other chapter written so far. But I've got tons of ideas. Tons, I tell you. I imagine it's gonna be a long one.


End file.
